Closer Together and Further Away
by thesilversun
Summary: Complete. AU from start of series 2. A routine collection of piece debris pulled through the Rift has far reaching consequences for Jack, Ianto and Owen. Stranded on a distant planet, the struggle to survive brings them closer than they'd ever thought they would be. Eventually Jack/Ianto/Owen. Cover art by star54kar.
1. Chapter 1

Written for Classic Torchwood big bang on Livejournal. Story is complete, I will be posting a chapter per day until all 12 parts are posted.

**Title:** Closer Together and Further Away.

**Writer: **The-Silver-Sun

**Rating**: Teen

**Word count:** 34124 (according to open office)

**Beta:** Czarina-kitty

**A/N:** Thank you to Czarina-kitty for betaing this for me, Star54kar for all the great artwork and to Psithurism for help on how Owen would treat Jack's injury. .

**Summary:** AU from start of series 2. A routine collection of piece debris pulled through the Rift has far reaching consequences for Jack, Ianto and Owen as they find themselves stranded on a distant planet.

* * *

**Part One.**

A grey autumnal drizzle had settled over Cardiff and Ianto pulled up the collar on his coat before getting out of the SUV.

Parked on the edge of a sprawling area of waste ground that had once housed some kind of industrial complex, it was now a rubble strewn weed patch whatever building project that should have occupied it seemingly on indefinite hold, the SUV gleamed wetly in the glare of the solitary working street light by the entrance to the site.

Sighing, Ianto looked around. There was no sign of the rest of the team. Reaching up to his bluetooth earpiece he said, "Gwen, Tosh, how's the search over by the canal going?"

"Wet. Very wet," replied Gwen, although her spirits didn't sound dampened by the weather or task.

A moment later Tosh added, "If it's here it must have powered down. I'm not getting anything beyond base levels of Huon and Bekaran energies at the moment."

Great, Ianto thought, we'll be here all afternoon at this rate. "If you get a reading let me know and I'll bring the containment crate over."

"Have Jack or Owen called anything in?" Gwen asked after a moment.

"Not yet. I'll let you know if they do." Ianto knew that he should probably have called Jack first or at the very least call him next, but Jack had only been back two weeks and things were still weird between them. Between Jack and the whole team really, if he was honest.

Spending a cold, wet afternoon searching for a piece of debris from the engines of a Moolian lightship with minimal information was doing little to change his opinion. The fact that Jack had been vague about just what was so bad about the piece of junk and still keeping information that they needed to do their job secret from them made it feel like absolutely nothing had changed.

Only it had. They'd changed. They'd had to. With Jack gone and none of them knowing if he would ever return they'd had no choice but to get on with it. Life hadn't stopped without Jack. And although it makes him feel disloyal in some kind of way that Ianto's not able or willing to describe, he thinks that they are better team because of Jack's absence, not in spite of it.

A bitter part of him, a part that he'd rather not admit to having, thinks that it would have been easier if Jack hadn't come back. If he'd let them get on with it, to succeed or fail on their own terms. Now though they were back in his shadow.

Ianto ran a hand through his hair. Everything was a mess and that was without even taking into account the not quite relationship thing that he and Jack had almost had. There have been moments since his return when he'd been sure Jack was about to tell him something, only for something to close off between them.

He was still trying to get his thoughts in order when Owen's voice came over his bluetooth. "You'd better have that containment box ready, because I've found it, and it's started fucking glowing."

Ianto could hear the fear in Owen's voice. It was a completely justified one, if the engine part discharged the Huon energy contained within it the result would – according to Jack at least – be pretty unpleasant.

"Where are you?" Ianto asked, knowing that the time they had to get it into containment was most likely measured in a few scant minutes.

"Down by the rubble from the knocked down warehouses. Will you hurry up?"

Ianto closed his eyes and took a deep breath. There was no way he'd be able to drive the SUV there – it was on the other side of the canal – the crossing just a narrow, rickety footbridge.

"Oi, you still there?" Owen's voice was loud and fearful. "It's started making a noise now, a whistling noise and it's getting hot."

Pushing down the fear that the thing was about to blow and take out Owen and half of Cardiff, Ianto said, "You head back to the SUV with it, I'll bring the containment box and I'll meet you half way."

"You'd bloody well better."

"I will," Ianto replied, worry making him snappy. "Now get moving."

"I like a man who can give orders."

Ianto spun round to see Jack leaning again the side of the SUV.

"How long have you been there?" he asked, hiding his surprise at being sneaked up on by opening the doors to the back of the SUV.

"Not long." Jack moved round so that he could see him again.

"Right then," Ianto said, gripping a handle on one side of the containment box. "Here's another one. Owen is bringing in the unit. It's active."

Jack's flirtatiousness is gone in an instant. "How much time do we have until it blows?"

"From the little you told us earlier about two or three minutes. Five at most."

"Better get going then." Jack took the other handle lifting the heavy box out of the SUV. Then they set off as fast as they can across the uneven, rubble strewn ground.

They heard and saw the object before they caught sight of Owen. In the gathering gloom of a late autumn dusk, the light and noise were unmissable. Owen, when they saw him, was running flat out, the shoebox sized alien power cell held out in front of him.

Owen skidded to a halt, barely avoiding colliding with them in his haste to be rid of the object. He nodded breathlessly towards the crate.

With the crate placed on the ground, Ianto allowed himself a small sigh of relief, as Jack released the four heavy duty clamps that held the lid in place.

The power cell was emitting so much light that it was impossible to look at it directly as Owen placed it in the crate, pushing it down amongst the strange jelly like beads of the specially designed packing material.

Still rather breathless from the run, Jack looked at Ianto and then nodded towards the lid. Lifting it together they placed it back on the top of the crate.

Owen gave them a tired, relieved smile. "That was too f..."

Whatever else Owen was going to say was cut off as a brilliant beam of blue light shot out of the narrow gap between the lid and the crate where the final catch hadn't yet been fastened, and engulfed them all.

X0X0X0X0X

"Oi. Come on Sleeping Beauty. Time to get up."

Ianto blinked awake, suddenly aware he was cold, damp and aching. For a moment he couldn't understand why, then the memory of the Moolian power cell rushed back, and he sat up suddenly needing to know if Jack and Owen were all right.

The movement made his stomach turn and Ianto barely had time to lean over before he was sick.

"Shit," Owen said moving back so he didn't get splattered. "Don't you go picking anything up."

"He'll be fine," Jack said sounding unconcerned. "Unscheduled teleportation like that doesn't agree with everyone. First time I tried it I was sick as a dog. You get used to it though."

Jack waited a moment and then moved to stand at Ianto's side, his hand resting on his shoulder. "Just breathe for a while, don't try getting up."

Ianto closed his eyes, his stomach feeling a little easier now it was empty. Jack's hand was heavy and reassuring on his shoulder, his fingers warm where they brush against his neck.

The air was fresh and cool, and after a couple of minutes Ianto opened his eyes. Marsh land spread out in front of him as far as he could see, although far away on the horizon there was a darker smudge that could be hills or far away mountains or maybe just a bank of heavy, low lying cloud.

Wherever they were it wasn't the construction site and waste ground on the edge of Grangetown.

Ianto took a shaky breath, trying to calm his nerves. That fact the energy discharge from the Moolian power cell hadn't incinerated them was good, but it left the question where were they, as they definitely weren't in Cardiff any more. Or at least not in present day Cardiff.

Ianto reached his hand up to where Jack's hand still rested on his shoulder. "I think I'm all right to get up now."

Jack gave him an approving smile and helped him to his feet.

A small flock of creatures that looked like a cross between bats and wading birds flew low across the horizon, their iridescent feathers shimmering in the evening sunlight.

Jack watched them for a moment, then shook his head.

"You don't know what they are, do you?" Owen asked, saying aloud what Ianto was thinking.

"No." The stiff breeze blowing across the marshes caught Jack's coat and hair, and he turned away from them. "We could be anywhere or any when. The only thing I know for sure is this isn't Earth."

"But you can contact this Doctor bloke of yours, right?" Owen said hopefully, circling round so that he was almost facing Jack again. "Get us home?"

"No." Jack's shoulders slumped and he turned again so that his back was too them once more. "No, I can't."

"Can't or won't?" Owen asked, an edge of anger creeping into his voice.

Realising that the situation was only likely to get worse, Ianto moved between them. "I'm sure Jack has a good reason why he can't." He looked at Jack, hopeful for a response. "You do, don't you?"

"Yeah. This." Jack gestured at the leather cuff about his wrist. "Doesn't work. It got broken."

There was an undercurrent of hurt in his voice that was unmistakeable. It was painful to hear and Ianto only just stopped himself from taking Jack's hand – they'd barely had that sort of relationship before Jack left, now Ianto's not even sure he'd accept it.

Owen snorted and looked unimpressed.

"What do you want from me?" Jack asked wearily, a hint of desperation creeping into his voice. "Because if it's answer or a way home I'm all out."

"How about the truth. You could try being honest with us for a change," Owen said irritably, folding his arms across his chest.

"Fine." Jack glared at them both. "I went away, things happened, then I came back, because I had nowhere else to go. Now let's get moving before we lose the light."

"Moving where?" There was real anger in Owen's voice now as he glared back at Jack. "There's nowhere to go."

"We don't know that unless we actually look," Ianto pointed out, hoping that Owen wasn't about to round on him instead.

"I 'spose." Owen looked around, the fight starting drain out of him. "It all looks the same to me. How do we pick?"

"Those might be hills over there." Ianto indicated the dark smudge on the horizon off to their left. Then sounding a lot more confident than he felt, he said "Higher ground should be drier and we might be able to see some kind settlement if we get to the top."

"All right," Owen said digging his hands in to the pockets of his leather jacket. "But for the record I still bloody hate the countryside."

They walked across the wet ground in silence, water welling up around every footprint left pressed in to the moss covered mud.

Tired, cold, and hungry now that his stomach had settled down, Ianto was grateful when they finally reached a small group of trees bushes on a small area of raised ground. The remains of the daylight were fading fast, long shadows stretching out from the trees in the thick golden light.

The island, as Ianto supposed it technically was, was little more than ten metres wide by about the same in length. A couple of the trees were dead, the wood dry enough to use for a fire if only they had something to light it with, while the bushes provided a welcome break from the wind that blew across the near flat landscape.

Warmth and food would definitely be welcome, Ianto though looking out into the gathering gloom of the marsh. Although knowing their luck they'd get neither and there'd be something out in the mud and reeds that wanted to eat them and then it would start to rain.

"It'll be just like camping," Jack said, seeming unconcerned by their situation.

"Because camping went so well for us last time," Ianto muttered to himself, less than happy that Jack would mention their disastrous trip to the Brecon Beacons, even if obliquely.

"Well I hate camping," Owen grumbled. "And we don't have tents or sleeping bags, so it not proper camping anyway. It's going to be wet and cold and horrible. And I'm hungry."

"I went on a survival course once. It was part of training," Jack said ignoring Owen's complaints, as he looked around at the tall reeds that grew at one edge of the island.

"So why didn't we get it?" Owen said, irritably. "Didn't think we'd need it, I suppose?"

"It was before I worked for Torchwood." There was a finality in Jack's voice that made it clear he was not inviting questions about just where and when it had been. He crouched down by the reeds and started pushing away the leaves and moss from the base to reveal the pale lower stem.

After uprooting six of them, he stood up and said, "Either of you got any matches? Because these aren't great raw."

"No," Ianto replied wondering why Jack would think he had.

"I've got a lighter." Owen held up a nice zippo style lighter he'd taken out of his jacket pocket.  
"I didn't know you smoked," Jack said, confused at how he could have missed something like that.

"I don't. I got it when I was with Diane," Owen said defensively. "I was going to give it to her, but she went, so I've still got it. Just as well, isn't it?"

It took several attempts to light the fire, none of them having any real skill it in, but eventually the fire was burning brightly, providing a small patch of light and warmth in the growing cold and dark.

A quick inspection of the island revealed a small spring that bubbled cold, clear water into the marsh, but nothing they found was likely to be edible and staying there for more than a night would use up the minimal resources in the form of roots and firewood that was there.

The spring water tasted fresh, but was so cold Ianto wished that they had some way of drinking it that wasn't just scooping it up with their hands.

"Right, it's too dark to go poking about any more," Owen said sitting down by the fire, and starting to unlace his shoes. "So get your boots off."

When, after a moment or two, Jack and Ianto hadn't followed suit, Owen added, "Look if you two want to get trench foot go right ahead and try to sleep in wet shoes."

There was something vaguely surreal, Ianto decided, about the three of them sitting around a small fire in the middle of nowhere warming their bare feet.

As the sun set the moon rose, followed shortly afterwards by a second moon. One near full and the other just a thin crescent, they hung bright and yellow in the star filled sky. There were so many more stars than Ianto was used to seeing in Cardiff, but whether that was due to where they were in space or because there was no light pollution beyond their little camp fire he didn't know.

It reminded him a little of the camping trip to France with Lisa just a few shorts month before... Ianto stopped, pushing down the thought before it could be fully realised. He had barely come to terms with the fact she was dead and that perhaps she had been for some time before the terrible day her body had finally died in the Hub. Remembering the good times and hopes and dreams that they'd shared was still too painful to attempt.

There was no attempt at conversation while the roots cooked next to the fire, placed on a couple of flat rocks Owen had found near the spring. Whether this was a good thing or not Ianto wasn't sure, but at least it spared him having to try to be positive about their chances of survival and of getting home. He just hoped that Gwen and Tosh would be all right without them. Because while they were both good at their jobs sometimes that wasn't enough, sometimes you needed back up.

Eventually, Jack prodded the roots and said that they were about as cooked and edible as they were likely to get. The roots were bland and rather fibrous even with cooking, but they were food and Ianto pushed himself to keep eating, as when they'd find anything else to eat was uncertain.

"What happened to you?" Ianto asked quietly once Owen was asleep, huddled into his leather jacket in a hollow at the base of one of the bushes.

"Time. Life," Jack replied, prodding the small fire with a stick, sending up small sparks into the dark.

"You've not been right since you got back," Ianto said moving closer, taking the chance that the rather cryptic answer might be a sign that Jack was finally willing to talk.

"I thought you were more observant than that," Jack said with a sigh as he pulled his greatcoat tighter about himself. "I've been wrong for a long time."

Reflected in the firelight, Ianto can see the sheen of unshed tears in his eyes. "You aren't to me. You never have been."

Jack stared at him, lost and disbelieving.

Ianto leant forward until their faces were mere inches apart almost before he realised what he was doing. They've not kissed since that awkward wonderful moment in front of the team just before Jack had disappeared, and Ianto wonders if perhaps if he made the first move now then maybe they'd be on even terms rather than just Jack's.

Sound of a night bird calling plaintive and shrill in the dark broke the silence between them and Jack jerked back, startled, his eyes darting back and forth, hand clenching tighter on the stick he'd use to rake over the fire.

"Jack?" Ianto asked concerned. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing. It all right. You get some sleep," Jack said, turning away to look out into the dark. "We've probably got a long walk ahead of us tomorrow."

"Yes. Yes, I know," Ianto replied hurried, knowing the moment was lost and silently cursing his own hesitation and over thinking of the situation. "You should too."

Jack nodded, seemingly distracted, but didn't answer.

Sighing, Ianto copied Owen and found space under one of the bushes near the fire, seeking a little warmth against damp chill of the marshland night to try to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Part Two.**

The night had been cold and despite them all trying to sleep separately by morning Jack, Ianto and Owen had huddled together for warmth, Jack's coat covering them like a blanket.

A light mist hung low over the marsh, but the sun was already shining overhead with the promise of it burning off soon.

None of them were morning people and, Ianto reflected as he tried to restart the fire, the lack of coffee was only making it worse. It didn't seem right to complain though, as he had seen the state of the men and woman on Flat Holm, those unfortunate enough to have been taken by the Rift and deposited back alive. Compared to them they were very fortunate indeed.

Eventually he got the fire relit and Jack uprooted some more of the roots they'd eaten the previous night. They weren't any better than the previous ones, but they cooked extra so that they would at least have something at lunch time.

The mist had almost completely gone by the time they'd finished the roots and put out the fire.

Being able to put on dry socks and shoes, Ianto had to admit, helped his mood a little. Provided of course he didn't think about the fact that once they started walking again they were going to end up soaked through again before they'd gone a dozen paces.

Standing at the edge of the dry ground, Ianto looked out over the marsh. Near featureless, it the spread out to the distance wherever he looked. There was no way of telling which way they had arrived from the previous night and the smudge on the horizon that could have been mountain is no longer visible.

He sighed and dug his hands into his pockets. They could wander around the same piece of marsh never getting anywhere and they'd be none the wiser.

"Here you go," Jack said tapping Ianto on the shoulder to get his attention, and then handing him his greatcoat. "I'll just be a minute."

"Why? Where are you going?" Ianto asked, a sudden worry twisting in him that Jack had a way to leave that he wasn't going to share with them.

"To climb a tree." Jack grinned at him. "Though I might be able to get a better view from up there." He pointed to the largest of the trees on the small island.

Ianto turned and looked at it. It had thick, stubby branches low on the trunk meant that starting the climb should be easy, the branches thinned both in number and size the higher it got increasing the risk and difficulty. He looked back at Jack. "Are you sure that's a good idea?"

"I'll be fine."

"Wouldn't it make more sense if Owen did it?" Ianto said as he looked at how the thin upper branches moved in the wind. "He's lighter than either of us, he'd be able to get higher safer than you."

"Except it'd be bloody pointless as I wouldn't be able to see a thing." Scowling, Owen stomped over to them.

Ianto gave him a puzzled look.

"I wear contact lenses, don't I?" Owen said irritably, as he rubbed his eyes. "Only I can't sleep in them and I couldn't store them so I had to throw them away last night. And I left my glasses back at the Hub, because I don't like wearing them. So don't either of you two go wandering off too far ahead."

"How bad are they?" Jack asked sounding concerned as he put a hand on Owen's arm.

"Not so bad as you need to get all handsy with me." Owen shrugged him off. "If it's about five or six feet or closer I'm fine. Over that and it's a bit fuzzy and if it's more than about fifty you can forget about it unless you don't mind me not being able to tell the difference between you and a tree."

"I'm sure there should be a joke about wood in there," Jack said with a laugh.

"Yeah, well I'm glad you can't find it."

"I will," Jack said walking over to the tree. Standing beneath it, he looked up and then tugged on a few branches testing their strength. Satisfied that the tree was solid enough to hold his weight, Jack climbed easily up into the lower branches.

"Show off," muttered Owen.

"I heard that," Jack called down. "If I was showing off I'd do this." Holding onto a branch above his head with one hand, he shielded his eyes from the bright sun with the other and leant out as far as he could from the tree without falling.

"Jack," Ianto said exasperated. "Are you trying to break your neck?"

"All right, I'll be careful." Jack returned to a safer foot and handhold, before continuing his climb.

"Can you see anything?" Owen called up once Jack stopped climbing and started to look around.

"There's open water that way, a lake maybe." Jack gestured off at to the right of where Owen and Ianto were standing. "And there might be mountains beyond that. There doesn't seem to be anything else. So we know where we're heading."

"I suppose we might be able to fish or something. Maybe build a boat," Ianto said trying to find an upside to the fact that Jack hadn't seen any sign of habitation.

"With what?" Owen asked. "We don't have any..."

There was sudden crack and the seemingly solid branch that Jack had stepped onto in his climb down gave way, the thinner branch he'd been holding onto for balance breaking moments later, unable to hold his weight. He fell with a yell of surprise that rapidly became a cry of pain as he hit the ground.

Ignoring the scrubby bushes that pulled and tugged at their clothes, Ianto and Owen ran to his side.

Jack was lying on the ground, his left leg raised up to almost chest height by a thin branch that had embedded itself into the thickest part of his calf.

"So how long does this sort of thing that to heal?" Owen asked as he crouched down next to Jack. "Because from what we've see of your freaky healing thing it could be anything from ten seconds to three days. And I really don't fancy hang about here for days on end."

Jack's breath was coming in short pants, his hand gripping his leg tightly above where the branch protruded from it. "About that..." He stopped a groan escaping his as he started to shake. "I got fixed. I'm just... a normal guy now."

"What!" Owen looked at him horrified.

"Oh god," Ianto said quietly, his heart beating so fast the blood seemed to rush in his ears.

"You have fucking awful time timing, you know that?" Owen said as he started to inspect the wound properly. "How long have you known?"

"A...month." Jack gasped in pain as Owen carefully lifted the ripped material of his trousers to see the where the branch protruded from the flesh.

"Well that's just great," Owen snapped, fear expressed as anger. "What do you think would have happened if you'd died without telling us? We'd be sat here like lemons waiting for you to come back. How can you be so bloody stupid?"

Jack closed his eyes, pain and maybe guilt overwhelming him. "I'm sorry."

Jack admitting being sorry for anything, in Ianto's experience, was pretty much limited to times when innocent people got killed by something nasty and alien and he'd been too late to stop it. To hear him actually apologise for his actions like this was somehow almost as shocking as finding out he was just a man now, or the injury itself.

"Yeah, well sorry doesn't fix shit, does it?" Owen pushed up his sleeves. "Why'd you want to go and get rid of it anyway? It seemed like a brilliant thing to have."

"Because I've seen everybody I've ever known or loved die." Jack opened his eyes and glared at him. "Any way better now than before you shot me in the head, right Owen?"

"Stop it!" Ianto snapped, accent more pronounced as his grip on his emotions slipped. "Both of you."

"All right. It's done now, isn't it?" Owen said, anger slowly ebbing away. "Anyway, don't want to annoy him any more or he'll start on us in Welsh."

"You speak Welsh?" Jack asked fixing on that as a possible distraction from the pain.

"A little. Primary school stuff. We all had to learn," Ianto replied rather self-consciously. "Me and a few of the other lads thought we could use it as secret language, like spies or something. I think it was about the only thing I liked about Primary school."

Owen gave a short snort of laughter.

"Look I only shouted at you in it because of those caterpillars," Ianto said defensively. "We were all hallucinating, remember? You were the one trying to teach the waste paper bin to roll over and fetch."

"Still in pain here. So can we save the stories for later?"

"Of course," Ianto said, realising that they were still treating Jack as if he were still the man who couldn't die.

"Normally I'd say don't pull it out, get it removed at a hospital. Only that's really not an option here, is it?"

"Just do something," Jack snapped.

"All right, just let me think for a second." Owen closed his eyes. When he opened them a few moments later the anger was finally gone, replaced something calmer and more professional. "Right, Ianto, I need your tie and something to fold up to hold over the wound."

Ianto nodded and then took off his coat, suit jacket and waistcoat, leaving them draped over a bush. He shivered in the cool morning air as he removed his shirt and tie. The shirt, he hoped, would be sufficient for Owen to use as a bandage as he had little else they could use.

"How you don't get heat stroke wearing all that lot I'll never know," Owen said taking the shirt and tie from Ianto. "Okay, now you support Jack's legs, both of them. No point having the other one hanging down and putting you and him off balance."

Ianto curled his arms under Jack's thighs, keeping his grip away from where Owen would need access to the wound.

"On three, you lift Jack's legs a little bit higher so there's no weight on the branch, don't let him move them and don't drop him." Owen looked at Jack until he was sure he had his attention. "This is going to hurt, try and keep still and I'll be done as quick as I can."

Jack nodded, then closed his eyes, tight lipped, trying to prepare himself for the pain.

Ianto shifted his grip on Jack, making sure it was a secure as possible.

"Right then. Here we go. One. Two. Three." Keeping one hand against Jack's leg, Owen slowly and carefully pulled on the branch. Jack tensed and then as it came free, cried out in pain.

Owen looked at the branch. It was bare and bark-less, the pitted surface worn with exposure to the sun and wind, while the top three inches ran red with Jack's blood. It was whole though, and satisfied that there wasn't any of it remaining in the wound Owen said, "All right, lay him down."

"Oh that hurt," Jack said voice scratchy as Ianto lowered his legs to the ground. "Adding that to list of things I'm never doing again."

Crouching down next to Jack, Owen wasted no time in ripping the torn fabric of his trousers open wider. The edges of the wound were ragged and it was bleeding sluggishly. "You don't seem to have hit anything major like an artery, although there's a fair bit of soft tissue injury, but with the right exercise once its healed you'll hopefully not have too much of a problem with it. But the main problem will be ..."

"Infection," Jack interrupted through gritted teeth, his grip on Ianto's hand, where he was holding it, painfully tight.

"Yeah, and I haven't got anything I can give you," Owen admitted miserably. "All right, we'd better get this cleaned the best we can. Ianto, you get him on his feet, I'll just go wash my hands at the spring and then I'll get started. I'd do it here, but I've got nothing to carry the water in."

"Do you think you can stand if I help you?" Ianto asked, uncertain of what he could do if the answer was no; he supposed that if Jack couldn't then perhaps with Owen's help they could carry him.

Jack thought for a moment and then nodded.

With Jack's arm about his shoulders and helped him over to where Owen was waiting by the spring.

There were a few shreds of lichen around the edges of the wound, and even though Owen worked as quickly and gently as he could by the time he'd cleaned it, Jack was shaking. Tears were running down his face by the time Owen was satisfied that he'd got the injury as clean as he could, given the circumstances.

Jack's fingers had dug into his arm, the whole time Owen had worked on his leg and Ianto knew that there would be bruises, but if it was doing anything to ease the pain etched on Jack's face he knew he'd gladly take more.

"I'll need something clean to re-bandage it with later," Owen said as he set about ripping the shirt into pieces. Taking what had once been a sleeve he folded it into a pad and secured it over the wound using the tie. "Pretty good job, if I do say so myself. How's it feeling?"

"Better than it was or that might just be because you aren't poking it any more."

"I suppose I'd better start making us a shelter," Ianto said standing up and looking at the trees and wondering just where to start. They had no tools and he had no practical skills in anything even remotely relevant. He knew he had to try though, Jack would need to rest to stand a chance of getting better.

"No, you're not," Jack said, "Because we're not staying here."

Owen pointed at Jack's leg. "And you can't walk on that."

"You mean I shouldn't," Jack replied as he slowly got to his feet leaning heavily against a tree for support. "Different thing. Think about it, both of you. We can't stay here."

"You can barely stand," Ianto said concerned that Jack moving about might make the injury worse or make it bleed more. "Do you really think walking is a good idea?"

"It's the only idea that makes sense." Jack glared at them, challenging them to contradict him. "Trust me on this."

"Jack's right. I hate it, but I think he's right. We should try," Owen said sound unhappy but resigned to the fact that leaving was actually the best of the bad choices they had available to them. "If you think you can manage it and if there's any possibility of somebody out there who can help us we need to find them as soon as we can. We were lucky last night that it didn't rain, but who knows about tonight? I don't fancy adding exposure or hypothermia to our problems."

Knowing he wasn't going to win the argument and not even sure if the argument for staying could really be made, Ianto sighed and hoped that this was a decision that they wouldn't live to regret.


	3. Chapter 3

**Part Three**

Even though they had walked slowly and had taken frequent stops Jack was shaking by the time they halted on a small patch of dry ground, blood slowly seeping through the bandage on his leg.

Ianto doubted that they were much more than a mile from island where they'd spent the night despite the length of time they had been walking. Hungry and cold, his shoes having soaked through with water again, Ianto helped Jack sit down, before going to stand at the edge of the dry ground.

The way Jack's breath had caught when he'd mistimed a step, pain shooting out from his injured leg, had been frighteningly reminiscent to Ianto of helping Lisa escape Torchwood Tower. In pain, her legs failing from the incomplete cyberconversion, he had supported her as they'd stumbled through the burning chaos, the screams of the dying and terrified cutting though them.

Despite the cool clean air, Ianto could almost taste the smoke in the back of his throat and feel the heat of the fires that had broken out in the tower on his skin.

"You spotted something over there?"

Ianto jumped as Owen spoke, not realising that he was standing right beside him. "No." He stopped, hating how shaken he sounded and how his hands shook. He dug his them into his pockets, not wanting Owen to see. Having him jumping at shadows was the last thing that they needed. "It's nothing."

"We should go," Jack said hoarsely as he got awkwardly to his feet. "We can't stay here, we need dry ground and a fire before we can rest."

"Then we go back to where we were last night," Owen said holding up a hand. "And that's not up for discussion. I know I agreed with you earlier, but the sun is starting to get lower again so we've probably only got a couple of hours of light left and knowing our luck if we keep walking in the dark we'll end up up to our necks in quicksand. We had food, water and somewhere dry...well dryish to sleep – and I don't see that anywhere else round here, do you?"

Ianto moved to Jack's side, relieved that Owen was taking a stand about it. "I'm sorry, but I think Owen is right. I don't think we should have left in the first place. Maybe if you're feeling better in a few days we can try again."

Jack ignored Ianto looked at Owen. "We both know that isn't going to happen."

If Jack had expected him to back down, it didn't happen as Owen stared him down. "It could, weirder things have happened, we ended up here after all. Now let me a have look at your leg and then we'll head back."

There wasn't anything more Owen could do other than use more of Ianto's old shirt to bandage the wound. Then supporting Jack between them they turned back towards the island.

It took even longer to return to the island, and Ianto was wondering if they were going to have to carry Jack by the time they had covered half the distance. Jack pushed on though, determined not to give up, as if by showing he could walk about to the island he'd somehow prove that he'd be able to walk tomorrow.

Lack of food, even after just a day, was telling. Although the roots had stopped his stomach from feeling quite so empty, they had done nothing to give him any energy and with the effort of supporting Jack he had started to feel a little light-headed himself.

The small island with it low tangle of bushes and few taller trees was a welcome sight in the dimming afternoon light. The day had seemed to pass quickly and Ianto as looked at his watch, which had somehow survived the journey to this strange alien planet, he realised that sunrise had been little more than ten hours before. The previous night hadn't seemed all that long either, and he suspected that a day on this planet was probably only about seventeen or eighteen hours long.

The length of the day was immaterial though and Ianto turned his attention to lighting a fire as soon as they reached where they had camped the previous night. It was a slow job coaxing the fire to light and stay lit and Ianto tried not to think about what they'd do when they exhausted the small supply of dry wood or Owen's lighter ran out of fluid.

"I forgot how bad this is, waiting for things to heal," Jack said a tremor in his voice, as wrapped in his greatcoat he tried to get warm by the small, barely burning fire. "It's been years, more than a century."

"You should probably rest," Ianto said, realising that Jack must be feeling awful if he was being so unguarded about his past. Because as much as he was curious about Jack's past, letting him ramble on when he'd almost certainly regret it later wasn't fair.

"No, I need to talk." Jack caught hold of Ianto's hand, eyes locked on his in an appeal for understanding. "To tell you why." Jack looked at Owen, the same need in his eyes. "To tell both of you why I left, why I came back."

"Why do I get the feeling that this isn't going to be one of your fun stories about how you slept with the entire chorus line of an amateur production of Oklahoma?" Owen said sitting down next to Jack.

"It wasn't the entire chorus and it wasn't all at once."

Ianto couldn't help but smile. For a moment it felt like they had the old Jack back, the one from before he went away. Then it was gone, lost to weariness and pain.

"When I left it wasn't because of what happened with the team, with Abbadon or Bilis. It was because of the Doctor. Only he didn't come for me," Jack said quietly, eyes downcast. "He was there just refuelling I guess. I saw him and I just grabbed on and didn't let go. Ended up at the end of the universe."

"Maybe he didn't realise…" Ianto began.

"Oh he realised. He knew what had happened to me and he'd left me behind – last man standing on a dead space station. I died for him." The bitterness and hurt in Jack's voice was clear and unmistakable. As was an undercurrent of guilt that suggested he didn't think he had the right to feel that hurt. "I'd told myself he couldn't have known. That maybe something had happened to him or to Rose. That there had to be a reason why he'd left me, why he never came back. But there wasn't, he just didn't want to have to deal with the freak I'd become."

"But he fixed you," Owen said, trying and failing to sound positive. "He must have cared a bit. And he did get you home safe..."

"He didn't fix me," Jack snapped, pain making his temper short. "It was an accident, just like the first time. There was machine, a paradox device, and I had to destroy it. I got caught in the blast as time rolled back. I guess it reset me as well as the time line." He closed his eyes, breathing uneven in a way that wasn't only down to his leg. "I thought I was going to die. I was ready to go."

Jack looked as vulnerable as Ianto had ever seen him, worse even than after he'd returned from dealing with John Ellis' suicide. Hoping that he wouldn't be pushed away, Ianto took Jack's hand in his. He was sure he should say something, tell Jack how glad he is that he didn't die, or the simple truth that he'd felt like that few times himself. Anything really, but the words wouldn't come.

"And that's what broke your wrist strap thing," Owen said sounding sure he was right.

"No." Jack refused to meet their eyes. "He broke it when I said I wouldn't travel with him any more."

Owen looked somewhere between angry and horrified.

"It's not like that. He said it was to protect the time lines, but I think he was trying to protect me." He smiled sadly, not sounding entirely convinced by his own argument. "He doesn't think the way we do. He sees everything and tries to do the best for everyone. He must have had his reasons. Maybe I would have done the same if I'd known why."

"Yeah right, because abandoning someone and then smashing their stuff so they can't leave or call for help is just how I'd protect someone," Owen said sarcastically. "Seriously he sounds like a class bloke. Can't think why you didn't want to stay with him."

Ianto tensed, waiting for the argument that would almost certainly follow.

"I'm tired," Jack said, his voice cracking so badly as to make it almost inaudible. "I'm not talking about this anymore. You've got your answers. Now leave me be."

Ianto shook his head as Owen opened his mouth to speak again. "No, let him rest, if it's what he wants."

"Whatever." Owen scowled and stomped to gather enough firewood to keep them going until morning.

Sighing, Ianto ran a hand through his hair. He cared about them both and hated to take sides, but eventually Jack would have to see that even if the Doctor hadn't done any of the things intentionally or out of spite, he still had every right to be hurt and angry at the thoughtlessness of it.

Not that he was going to try to talk Jack round about it. Jack was asleep or at least pretending to be, while Owen gathered anything that looked like it might burn. Turning his attention to the reeds, Ianto started to gather some more roots and tried not to think about how desperate their situation was.

Hiding in routine, almost to the point of obsession in some tasks had been how he'd got through long weeks following the fall of Torchwood One, caring for Lisa and terrible first few weeks after her death. Part of him wondered if there was any point in finding any sort of routine to cling to. They couldn't survive on a few roots, not long term. They were just delaying the inevitable.

With Jack apparently asleep and Owen not having said a word to either of them since Jack's reveal about his past, Ianto sat by the fire and tried not to think too hard about what tomorrow would bring.

His thoughts turned to Gwen and Tosh. Would they search for them or would they assume they were all dead? He closed his eyes, maybe they'd think he and Owen were, but they didn't know about Jack's new found mortality. Gwen would never stop looking as long as she thought Jack was out there and in need of help. And as long as she searched he knew Tosh would too. He couldn't allow himself that hope of rescue though, because the despair when it failed to happen was more than he was willing to subject himself to.

"I am sorry you know," Owen said interrupting his thoughts. Between them the fire burnt lower, the embers just a deep red glow against the darkness of the cloudy, moonless night.

"For what?" Ianto asked, his voice heavy with sleep that he didn't welcome, worried what twisted memories would turn his dreams to nightmares when he finally closed his eyes.

"For Jack."

"You've done all you can." Ianto looked at Owen across the fire. Owen's head was bowed, low light lit the angles of his face and the gingerish brown stubble clinging to his chin making him look older than Ianto knew him to be. "We're lucky you're with us."

"I mean when I shot Jack. Before he left us. I was so angry, I just lost it." He sighed and moved a little closer to the fire. "I thought he'd forgiven me, but today..."

"Don't," Ianto interrupted, not wanting to get into a conversation about how much they let Jack down. Because they had let him down, admittedly a lot of it could have been avoided if Jack had just told them the truth, rather than just continuing to do his 'do as I say and don't ask questions' routine. What had happened at Torchwood One had meant Ianto was wary of just following orders without questioning them at least a little bit.

He wondered if Tosh had been allowed access to the Rift manipulator data after she and Jack had returned from the 1940's, so she could find out whether her calculations would have worked if they hadn't been missing the final parameters, then perhaps none of what followed would have happened. If they had found a way to control the Rift then, they might have even had a hope of rescue now. As it was, Ianto knew their chances of seeing Earth again was remote. Even survival for more than a few more days wasn't a given.

He drew his knees up until they reached his chest; cold not merely physically chilling him.

The only comfort he had was that with the exception of Gwen and Tosh there was nobody who would miss him. He's glad it wasn't Gwen who was taken. She had a life, a wedding with Rhys in just a few short month's time and, if she wanted it, a life away from Torchwood.

Part of him wishes Tosh were with them, because if there were a way, however remote of making Jack wrist strap thing work again, she'd be able to do it. The other part of him was relieved that Tosh wasn't trapped in their marshy nightmare.

"Have you gone to sleep?" Owen asked, moving round the fire to sit closer to him.

"No," Ianto said, eyes closed, chin resting on his knees. He didn't know what to say to Owen about Jack. He hoped that Jack had forgiven him or a least didn't hold any form of grudge against Owen for what had happened, but it didn't feel right saying that he had when he didn't know for certain. He'd seemed pretty forgiving just before he'd left, but with Jack Ianto wasn't every really sure of anything.

"Well you probably should," Owen said rather more tersely than was necessary. "As you'll be building that shelter you were on about this morning."

Ianto didn't bother opening his eyes. "Lucky me."

"Well you are," Owen grumbled. "At least you can see what you're doing and you don't have a dodgy leg."

Ianto sighed. Trust Owen to be able to make him feel guilty for not needing glasses and not having fallen out of a tree. "Goodnight, Owen." Then with one last look at Owen and Jack, Ianto lay down, hoping that the morning would bring a brighter and better day.

X0X0X0X0X

Ianto woke up cold, stiff and hungry, his nerves ragged from the formless fears that had haunted his dreams, but any complaints died before they were fully realised as he saw Jack.

Sat by the fire, his injured leg held awkwardly straight out in front of him, he was pale, tight lipped and trembling. He looked up as he heard Ianto move, revealing dark smudges beneath his eyes showing sleep had been elusive.

His teeth chattered as he spoke. "Guessing I look as bad as I feel."

"I didn't mean to stare," Ianto said sitting down beside him. He wondered if Jack would mention anything from their conversation the previous day, or whether he would act as if it had never happened.

"I don't know if I'm going to be able to walk today," Jack said quietly, leaning against Ianto's shoulder, his eyes closed. "You should probably leave me. If you find help, you can come back. I trust you."

"No," Ianto said firmly, wondering if it was some kind of test to see whether they'd abandon him. "If you can't walk we all stay here."

"Ianto's right, we stay together," Owen said as he returned from collecting more firewood. "It's light enough to get a good look at your leg again. I'll give it a clean and redress it. Then we'll decide what to do."

"It's going to hurt, isn't it?"

"Yeah. Sorry."

Jack grimaced and lay down. "Your bedside manner sucks, you know that?"

"Yeah, but you love me any way."

The wound was still leaking slightly as Owen removed the makeshift bandage, blood and yellowish fluid staining the material, while edges of it looked red and inflamed. Feeling useless, Ianto sat next to Jack and let him hold his hand under his fingers hurt with the pressure.

Using the other sleeve of Ianto's shirt and the tie, Owen re-bandaged the wound. Picking up the bloodied material, Owen stood without a word and walked away.

Worried by Owen's silence and sudden departure, Ianto carefully freed his hand from Jack. "I'll just see if he needs anything. I'll only be a minute."

"How bad is it?" Ianto asked quietly as reached Owen who was staring down into a pool of water at the edge of the island.

Owen glanced back at Jack. "It's infected, only time will tell how bad. But if he gets full blown septicaemia there's not going to be anything I can do for him." He closed his eyes, hands balling into fists at his sides. "I hate this fucking place. I hate the countryside. I hate that I haven't got anything I need and I hate that I'm probably going to have to watch him die and I can't do a sodding thing about it."

Owen's voice cracked and he turned away from Ianto. Lack of food, stress, tiredness and the near overwhelming hopelessness of their situation stripping them of any reserve they had, tears and anger all too easily rising to the surface.

"Do you want a minute?" Ianto asked, putting a hand on his shoulder, realising that Owen was close to tears.

Owen nodded, but didn't reply.

There had been this strange thing between them since Jack left with the Doctor, a growing respect between that had on occasions nearly become something more. It had started as a recognition of shared pain and loss in the wake of Jack's departures and had become something close to friendship by the time they had been send on a wild goose chase up the Himalayas. There it had been cemented into an understanding that they probably would never have achieved if they had remained in Cardiff, the reliance and trust that they'd needed to have in each other during that week in the mountains forcing them to put aside any remaining differences. If the plan in sending them there had been to break them, then it had failed spectacularly and they has emerged closer and more sure of their abilities to work together than they had been before.

Ianto gave Owen's shoulder a small squeeze. "I'll see if I can get him to eat something."

Owen dug his hands into his pockets and hung his head, unable or unwilling to reply.

Returning to Jack, Ianto sat down, and said with a lightness he didn't feel, "So how do you want your roots this morning? Charred or just a bit smoky?"


	4. Chapter 4

The mist had thickened rather than thinned as the sun had risen higher, and despite Jack's protestations that they should start walking again even if it meant leaving him behind, they decided to wait.

Building a shelter was less than successful and after a couple of hours work all Ianto had to show for his efforts was a tangle of branches that almost certainly wouldn't keep them dry if it rained and sore hands. Disheartened, he'd sat back down by the fire with Owen and Jack.

"Did you hear that?" Owen asked quietly, prodding Ianto in the arm.

Ianto blinked realising that he must have nearly been asleep. "Hear what?"

Owen squinted out into the mist shrouded marsh. "I thought I heard people talking."

They've not seen any sign of habitation or any life larger than that the bat-birds creatures that had flown over shortly after their arrival, but Ianto knew that they'd seen very little of the place they found themselves stranded in. He got to his feet and said, "I'll take a look."

"Just make sure no one sees you," Owen said, wary despite the fact that they needed help. "As knowing our luck, they'll want to eat our brains or something."

"Thanks for that, Owen," Ianto muttered mostly to himself. "Because I don't still have nightmares about being eaten." Moving to the edge of the island, he crouched down behind one of the low, scrubby bushes and peered through.

Standing in the marsh, watching the island intently and occasionally pointing at the thin wisps of smoke from their camp fire were five aliens. Little more than four foot tall they were covered from head to foot in short, dense lilac coloured fur. Large golden eyes, small rounded ears and noses as well as whiskers gave them the appearance of otters taken humanoid form.

Carrying sticks, bows and nets they could have been a hunting or foraging party, but Ianto wasn't willing to take the risk that they hadn't actually come to chase them off their land. Ducking back down, Ianto quietly and carefully made his way back to Owen.

"Did you see something?" Owen asked, caught somewhere between hope and fear.

"Yes." Ianto turned to Jack. "Do you know anything about short, hairy, purple aliens?"

Jack blinked at him bleary eyed. "Why?"

"Because there are five of them over there." Ianto pointed to where he'd seen them watching the island from the marsh.

"Were," Owen said moving closer to them. "Look over there."

Ianto turned to see the five aliens standing on the edge of their camp, still watching them with the same unblinking gaze.

"What should we do?" Ianto asked, wishing he had something to hand to defend them if the aliens did prove hostile.

"Go and say hello," Jack said, a half smile on his lips. "Although I seem to remember that got me told off a few times."

Before they could do anything else one of the aliens handed their bow and stick to one of the others in their group and stepped forwards. They patted their chest with a web fingered hand, the gesture making the seashell and feather necklace they were wearing clatter. "Pon-Pel."

Ianto and Owen looked at Jack, hoping he knew whether this was a challenge, a greeting or something else entirely.

Jack shook his head and then said, "Get me up."

With effort, Ianto and Owen got him to his feet. With his arms about their shoulders, they helped Jack limp forwards.

Stopping in front of the alien who had spoken, Jack pointed to himself and said, "Jack." Then he held out his hand and smiled "Hello."

The alien tilted their head to one side considering them for a moment and then spoke again. Rather haltingly this time in a language different from what they had first spoken in, as if it wasn't something they usually had cause to use.

Ianto couldn't understand what was being said, and if Owen's expression was anything to go by neither could he. Jack however smiled and replied.

The alien smiled back, their ears twitching as they revealed a mouth full of small sharply pointed teeth.

"So who are they?" Owen asked not happy about being unable to understand what was being said.

"Her name is Pon-Pel and she's a tracker." He spoke to Pon-Pel again before translating again. "Apparently this planet is called Elen Sicar and they are the Star-Chosen. And handily she can speak a little bit one of the eight pan galactic trade languages."

"Do they mind us being here?" Ianto asked. From what he could tell the aliens didn't seem hostile, but he unwilling to just assume that to be true.

"No, they're curious though. They saw our fire and came to see who was here." The effort of staying on his feet was beginning to tell and Jack swayed, his good leg faltering under him, and he would have fallen if Ianto and Owen hadn't held him up.

Owen gave rather annoyed sigh. "You know you could have just said 'I need to sit down'."

"No," Jack said, the appeal mostly directed at Ianto. "If I sit down, really I'm not going to want to get back up."

Pon-Pel looked where the makeshift bandage was tied about Jack's leg and then turned back to the other Star-Chosen and started talking animatedly to them.

"What are they saying now?" Owen peered at the Star-Chosen who were standing just far enough away to be out of focus.

"I don't know," Jack replied irritably. "Why do you think I always have the answers? I don't. I never did."

Ianto sighed. He really wished that Owen could ask a simple question without making it sound like a challenge or an accusation and that Jack could stop taking everything so personally. He was about to try to intervene and defuse the situation when Pon-Pel returned and spoke to Jack again.

"Well here's you answer, Owen. They're going to take us to their village," Jack said once he'd finished talking to Pon-Pel. He smiled, weary, pained but genuine. "They think we should be able to get there before dark."

It wasn't exactly a long time, but Ianto was all too aware of how difficult Jack had found walking the previous day and Owen and his own somewhat weakened state after more than two days with nothing more than water and a handful of roots of dubious nutritional value. They would have to make the walk, the alternative didn't bear thinking about.

The mist had finally started to lift as they doused camp fire with water. Satisfied that it was out, Pon-Pel moved to the edge of the island and gestured for the rest of them to follow her.

With legs that were short even in comparison to their height, the Star-Chosen's walking speed was slow enough that Jack was able, with Ianto and Owen's help, not to fall behind.

The marsh was still as vast and featureless as before as far as Ianto could tell, but the Star-Chosen seemed to know exactly where they were going. Occasionally one or two of them would break off from the main group before returning, the string bags they carried over their shoulders filled with roots or leaves or some large spiral shells that looked a little like very stretched out snails.

It was hard going and it amazed Ianto that Jack was still on his feet and attempting the occasional translation for them. As time passed his attempts at conversation dwindled

Walking ahead of the rest of the group, Pon-Pel reached the top of the rise before them. She stopped at the crest and pointed to whatever was on the other side of the ridge, before turning back to them and saying something that Ianto didn't understand, but apparently made the rest of the Star-Chosen make a noise that he could only hope was a happy one.

It only took a minute or two more for Ianto, Owen and Jack to reach the ridge and see what Pon-Pel had been so pleased to see.

Beyond the ridge the ground sloped gentle away down to a large lake, the far side of which was lost beyond the horizon. Away to his right on a narrow peninsula tall trees with sparsely spaced branches, which looked rather like scots pines, spread down to the lake's rocky shore, The golden evening sunlight caught the blue-grey needle like leaves making them shimmer against the cloudless sky.

And on the lake was the Star-Chosen's village. A collection of two dozen oval wood and thatch buildings on a wooden platform built on top of massive timber piling. Not connected to the land, as far as Ianto could see, access appeared to be via the half a dozen jetties that protruded out from the edge of the platform into the lake, alongside of which canoes, rafts and a couple of more substantial single masted boats moored.

Thin wisps of smoke rose from most of the buildings, fire lit for warmth and cooking the evening meal was Ianto's guess, although how they did it safely without burning down the whole wood village he didn't know.

When they reached the lake shore, Pon-Pel held up a hand to signal that they should stop. The Star-Chosen put down the bags and baskets they were carrying, and sat down on the pebbly beach. After a moment they turned to each other and started talking.

Owen squinted across the water towards the village. Then he tried looking through one eye and then the other, before giving a frustrated sigh. Turning to Ianto he said, "So is there something over there or not?"

"There's a village. I think they're waiting for something or someone," Ianto said, aware that Jack was now leaning almost all his weight against him, his whole body trembling with the effort of remaining upright. "I'll try and find out in a minute, first Jack needs to sit down."

Looking round Ianto saw a large driftwood log lying on the narrow, rocky shore and he helped Jack over to it. There was no sense in keeping him on his feet any longer than was necessary – he'd worry about getting Jack back on his feet when they were ready to move again.

While Ianto helped Jack, Pon-Pel lit a lantern, then lifted it high on the pole she carried with her, before raising and dipping it three times.

After a few moments there was an answering light from the nearest of the jetties, and Ianto could see that a raft was being made ready to come out and meet them.

Before the rafts could set sail, Pon-Pel covered one pane of the lantern with a scrap of red cloth and  
held it aloft again. She kept it in place until there was an answering blue light from the jetty and then she lowered the lantern and extinguished the flame.

It didn't take long for the rafts to cross the lake, the Star-Chosen paddling them into the shallow water next to them.

The journey across the lake was surprisingly smooth. Ianto hadn't been sure what to expect as his own experience with boats comprised of a one hour sight-seeing trip down the Thames and the occasional trip out to Flat Holm while Jack had been gone.

Next to him on the raft, Jack was lying down with eyes closed, grateful for the chance to rest. While on a second raft Owen sat with Pon-Pel, looking decidedly unhappy about the whole experience.

A large crowd had gathered by the jetty, dozens of curious Star-Chosen watching them as they moored the rafts.

Climbing off the rafts was harder than getting on, the jetty standing above the level of the gently rolling deck of the craft. Eventually, with Ianto on the jetty and Owen on the raft, they managed to get Jack off the raft. The effort seemed to have taken the last of the energy Jack had and he shivered and shook, his arms around Ianto for support until Owen could help.

Waiting at the front of the crowd was an older Star-Chosen. Leaning on a twisted walking cane, her lilac fur had turned to silvery grey.

Pon-Pel stepped forward to greet her. Palms pressed together then foreheads touched. They stepped back from each other and Pon-Pel spoke to her briefly. Then, after making a clicking noise with her tongue and moving her head from side to side, Pon-Pel began to move the curious crowd out of their way. Some drifted away, back to their houses, while others, mainly children stayed watching their strange visitors.

The older Star-Chosen moved forward until she was just in front of Jack. Reaching up, she placed a hand on his chest, making sure she had his attention before speaking to him calmly and clearly in the trade language used by Pon-Pel.

Jack nodded wearily, eyes closed. "She speaks it too. Speaks it better." His voice was slurred with exhaustion and he didn't raise his head or open his eyes. "She's their healer. Her name's Cisca-Mar. She's err..." He stopped and then spoke briefly to Cisca-Mar, before reverting back to English for Ianto and Owen. "I told her you're a healer, a doctor. It's going to be all right."

Cisca-Mar indicated that they should follow her to what appeared to be one of the largest buildings in the village. With Jack nearly collapsing between them Owen and Ianto helped him cover the short distance to the building.

The door was low and they all had to duck to enter, but once they were inside the high, conical roof meant that they could stand comfortable as long kept towards the centre of the building.

Two more Star-chosen were working inside. One was grinding some kind of herb into powder in a mortar, while the other tended to a fire burning in a raised, clay-line hearth. They both turned and looked at Cisca-Mar as she called to them.

Although Ianto couldn't understand the words that were being said the meaning was clear: Please come and help me.

The Star-chosen who had been tending the fire lifted a pot of water onto a hook above the flames, and then walked over to them. The other looked curiously at them, but didn't approach, opting instead to pull back the covers on a bed in the corner of the room.

Cisca-Mar pointed to Jack and then to the bed.

"Not going to make a joke about everybody wanting to get you in bed?" Owen said helping Jack over to it.

Jack shook his head.

Owen gave Ianto a worried, disbelieving look, but said nothing. Ianto knew what he meant. When Jack stopped making inappropriate jokes and comments things were pretty bad.

The bed was a little too short, even though the Star-Chosen had tried to lengthen it by placing a storage trunk with a blanket over the lid at the end of it. Jack didn't care though and he laid down with a groan, which Ianto suspected was as much from pain as relief at being off his feet.

"Hey, no sleeping yet," Owen said to Jack, his tone kinder than Ianto was generally used to hearing. "I've got to give it a clean first."

Jack looked at them both with weary, pain filled eyes. "I was really hoping you weren't going say that."

The wound looked worse than it had that morning, the inflammation round the edges more pronounced, blood and pus leaking from it as part of the scab came away with the makeshift bandage.

"It's bad, isn't it?" Jack asked through gritted teeth.

"Yeah." Owen kept his eyes on Jack's leg rather than his face. "But it's going to all right. I can give it a proper clean now. You'll be fine in no time."

It was a lie. Ianto knew it with a cold, terrible certainty that Owen was lying to try and make Jack feel better. Owen, who didn't normally care about whose feelings he trampled on felt the situation was bad enough not to burden Jack with the truth.

"Do you need me to do anything?" Ianto asked, relieved that his voice sounded a lot steadier than he felt.

Owen rubbed a weary hand over this eyes. "Yeah, keep his leg still and try not to get in the way."

Jack shook and cried out as Owen and Cisca-Mar cleaned the wound as thoroughly as they could. Unable to do anything more than hold Jack's leg still, Ianto felt useless. The utter helplessness and inability to do anything to ease the pain dragging up memories of caring for Lisa in the first few weeks following her partial conversion.

As soon as he was no longer needed to keep the leg still, Ianto moved to the top of the bed. Shivering, his eyes glazed with pain, Jack lifted his head slightly so it rested on Ianto's thigh, before slumping back exhausted.

It scared Ianto to see him like this. Everything that Owen had said about blood poisoning and Jack's own admission that not so long before he'd been ready and willing to die settling like a weight in his chest. He took Jack's hand tightly in his, hating that he needed to draw as much comfort from it as he was giving.

At one of the small tables round the edge of the room, Cisca-Mar scooped some bright green paste out of a small earthenware pot and spread it onto a pad of cloth. She pointed to Jack's leg indicating that it needed to go over the wound.

Owen looked dubiously at the green goo and then sighed and took it from her.

Jack flinched as Owen carefully placed it over the wound. "It feels odd," he said after a moment.

"You want me to take it off?" Owen asked, sounding concerned that whatever was on the bandage might be having some undesired effect.

Jack blinked and then slowly shook his head. "It's sort of cold and tingly. I think it's helping."

"That's good, isn't it?" Ianto said, giving his hand a reassuring squeeze.

"If it starts feeling weird tell me and I'll get taken it off," Owen said as he started to wrap a bandage round Jack's leg to keep the pad in place.

Owen had just finished securing the bandage when Pon-Pel rejoined them. After settling the large, round earthenware cooking pot she'd been carrying into the embers at edge of the fire, she went over to Cisca-Mar and started talking.

"She's got them well trained," Owen said approvingly, as he watched one of Cisca-Mar's assistants start to tidy up, the other mixing some kind of dried herb with hot water in a lidded jug.

Once the pot had had time to heat through Pon-Pel ladled its contents into bowls. After days without a proper meal the stew, a mixture of sliced roots and pieces of fish, seemed like some of the best food Ianto had ever eaten. He looked at Owen who was eating as fast as the rather too small spoons would allow. It reminded him of all the times they'd ended up working stupidly late chasing down something that had come through the Rift and then ordered takeaway. Sighing, he tried to push away the thought that they were never going to be able to do that again.

Jack ate a little, but was soon nearly asleep in his food, the green paste on the bandage apparently having a painkilling effect finally allowing him to sleep.

Without Jack to translate for them communication was limited to pointing and gesturing and hoping that they were understood. Ianto watched as Owen tried to talk to Cisca-Mar about what medical supplies she had available and wondered if he would have any success.

Once the extra lanterns had been extinguished and the detritus from cleaning Jack wound had been cleared away, Cisca-Mar's assistants left for the night, Pon-Pel going with them.

There didn't appear to be a spare bed anywhere, but Ianto found he didn't care. Exhausted, he lay down on one of the reed mats by the fire, the need to rest weighing heavier on him than anything else, at least for now.

They'd survived the marsh and found help, now all they had to make Jack well again and get home. Closing his eyes, Ianto drifted off to sleep with hope for the future in his heart for the first time since they'd left Cardiff.


	5. Chapter 5

**Part Four**

Any hope that Ianto had that a full night's sleep in a proper bed and a decent meal would help Jack had faded by morning.

The herb concoction Cisca-Mar had given Jack had helped with the pain, but the slow, steady rise of his temperature continued unabated through the day until he was drenched in sweat and shivering violently, his face flushed with fever.

The day slipped by in a hubbub of voices that Ianto couldn't understand. Pon-Pel came to visit again and to bring food, which had been coarse grained flat bread and soup this time. A few other visitors came, either of out curiosity or because they had something to collect from Cisca-Mar or to give to her..

Owen did what he could for Jack, gently but firmly ignoring Jack's pleas not to change the bandages and clean the wound because it hurt, stripping off his clothes and pulling back the bedsheets in an attempt to cool him down, and getting him to drink.

By evening, the sun was setting across the water, a ball of orange fire on the horizon visible through the open door of the house. Cisca-Mar had propped it open in an attempt to help cool Jack down, although it appeared to have had little or no effect.

"How is he doing?" Owen asked, when Ianto joined him by the fire.

"He thought he was talking to somebody called Alex," Ianto said quietly, not really wanting to think about how sick Jack had become, his fever so high that he was delirious. "He wanted to know if he was dying."

Owen snapped the stick he'd been idly toying with angrily and threw it on the fire. "If he can't fight off the infection he soon will be."

It was at times like this that Ianto hated Owen's bluntness. "There must be something you can do."

"What else is there?" Owen snapped. "Tell me and I will do it. I'm running out of ideas that aren't just bloody desperation. Hell, if I thought he stood a chance of surviving having it cut off so we could start with a clean, controlled wound I'd do it."

Feeling sick at the thought of it, Ianto hunched forwards, arms wrapped about himself. He felt useless, stupid, a failure. Why was it everybody he cared for died? His mum after long months in Providence Park, his dad too soon after that, unable to live without the love of his life. Lisa who he'd have died for it would have meant she could have lived.

Owen sighed and got up. He paused as he passed Ianto, his hand resting briefly on his shoulder. "I'll go sit with him for a bit. You try and get your head together, 'cause I'm not doing all this on my own."

0X0X0X0

"They're hiding something," Owen said almost before Ianto had a chance to sit down to breakfast the next morning.

"Such as?" Ianto asked wearily, unable to summon any enthusiasm or curiosity. Sleep had been a long time coming the previous night and when it finally had it had been broken all too frequently by Jack's cries and groans as he suffered through fever fuelled nightmares.

"They know stuff." Owen watched the Star-Chosen intently out the open doorway. "Cisca-Mar, the others healers, they understand sterilizing instruments, actually having separate medical stuff, keeping things clean. The big thing though is there's no hocus pocus crap going on with it. Sure they have herbs and stuff rather than proper medicine, but they know what they're doing with it, they weigh out the stuff, they even write it down."

Owen leant closer to Ianto as if he didn't want anybody else to hear. "And that's another thing all the writing and counting. They live like they're something out of the Stone Age, but all the kids are sent to school, they all read and write. And they have maps and that sundial thing to tell the time."

"You noticed all that?" Ianto said impressed. He pushed the porridge like substance round his bowl, not feeling like eating it as he wondered how he'd missed what Owen had noticed. "Couldn't that just be normal for them? They aren't human, is it really right to judge them by human standards?"

Owen glared at him. "I know you like to think you know everything, that you're so much smarter than us, well this is medical stuff and that's what I'm good at. Don't look so surprised, Jack hired me because I was good at my job, not because he wanted a new fuck toy."

"It got me into Torchwood and back then that's all that mattered." Ianto had no illusions why he'd been hired, he'd been willing to do anything to get himself and Lisa into Torchwood. But he also knew that his relationship with Jack had changed since then, mutating into something closer and deeper after Lisa's death or at least it had until the point Jack had gone to find the Doctor, after that Jack had seemed cut off, like there was something missing.

It didn't change the fact that what Owen said hurt, but Ianto had grown used to the fact that Owen only ever made his most vicious personal attacks when he felt that the situation was spiralling out of his control. There was nothing to be gained by arguing with Owen, so Ianto said, "So what do you think is going on?"

"They've got access to information, maybe even medical tech and they aren't telling us about it. Why else would they know this trade language thing Jack was talking to them in?"

"You really think so?" Ianto said watching the Star-Chosen laugh and talk as they loaded their boats for a day's fishing on the lake or a trip out into the many rivers that cut through the marshes. It didn't seem likely, but now that Owen had said it all Ianto could think was how he might be right. Even the Star-Chosen's reaction to finding them was, in hindsight, suspicious. Why had they been so accepting of what to them must have seemed like very tall, strange aliens suddenly appearing close to their home? Why had they been able to speak the trade language that Jack had spoken to them if they didn't have contact with the outside world?

"As sure as I can be," Owen replied, looking worn. "In a place like this I'd expect cutting edge medicine to be a clean bandage and it's not. Like I said something about this place just don't add up."

"So what are we going to do?" Ianto asked, trying to come up with any ideas and failing. He was sure that if he hadn't been so tired he could have thought of something.

"That wrist strap thing he wears," Owen said after a moment. "When we didn't know if we'd be able to speak to the aliens he was looking at it. Maybe some bits of it still work. I know he said it was broken, but he used it for stuff around the Hub, controlling the lift and switching stuff on and off.

"You think so?" Ianto said willing to grasp at any small glimmer of hope that he could find.

"I'm saying it's worth a go." Owen glanced round to where Jack's bed was. "You should do it," he said, before adding grudgingly, "You're better with the whole languages thing than I am and at getting weird tech to work."

Ianto nodded and took a shaky breath, trying to settle his nerves before going over to Jack.

Jack shivered and shook in the grip of pain and fever, moving restlessly and muttering incoherently as Ianto took his wrist strap.

"I'll bring it back," Ianto said trying to reassure him as he fastened it about his own wrist. It felt warm and heavy, the old worn leather smooth against his skin. Curious, he opened the cover, hoping that he'd be able see how it worked. The few buttons that were inside though were unmarked, while the small, oval screen didn't seem to have any kind of display beyond an occasional blue wiggling line.

He hadn't wanted to disturb Jack any more than was necessary, but he could think of no other way of find out how it worked. So keeling down by the side of Jack's bed, he asked, "Jack, I need you to tell me how this works."

Jack stirred, his eyes opening. Over bright and poorly focused they seemed to look past Ianto. "Doesn't work. Trapped here. I waited so long."

"I know, I just need to know if it works as a translator?" Ianto took Jack's hand in his, trying not to think about how hot it felt or how weak his grip had become. Just a few short days of sickness had seemed to wither him, his eyes bruised and sunken in a face that seemed to have ages overnight.

"Yes. Some things. It's in your mind." He tried to hold Ianto's hand tighter and failed. "I see it all in my mind. All their faces. They leave me. Never leave me alone." He started to cry, silent sobs shaking him. "They're all dead. Should have been me. I shouldn't have lived. I shouldn't... shouldn't..."

"Please don't do this," Ianto said, voice cracking as he freed his hand from Jack's, his own tears starting to fall. Leaning forward he pressed a soft kiss to Jack's forehead. "I'll be back soon, I promise."

Owen looked at Ianto's tear streaked face with fear in his eyes. "Is he..."

"No," Ianto managed to choke out. "But stay with him. He shouldn't alone, not if-"

"Just go and get some answers," Owen said interrupting him.

Ianto nodded and wiped his eyes. Feeling shaken and wretched, he stood for some minutes in the doorway to the house before stepping outside and going to look for somebody to answer his questions.

He found Cisca-Mar sitting on the pier nearest the house where the morning sun shone down, chasing away they night's chill. Working from a sheaf of reeds beside her, she coiled and bound them into a growing spiral, making one of the braided rugs that covered the floors and walls of the house.

"You come with questions," she said without turning around.

It seemed strange to be able to understand her, especially as there seemed to be a delay in the translation as he heard words that he didn't understand, but seconds later the translation appeared in his mind. Not entirely sure that he liked the sensation, Ianto sat down on the pier next to her. He was wondering how he was going to reply to her when the words seemed to form in his mind. Even less sure he liked how that felt, Ianto repeated them carefully. "You're not surprised I can talk to you?"

Cisca-Mar laughed. "You have some way to go before you speak as well as your friend."

"Owen thinks you've got access to technology that we've not seen," Ianto said, as he decided that coming straight to the point was probably the best approach.

"He is right in a way." She put her braiding aside and turned to look at him. "Yet wrong in what he believes we still have."

"What do you have?" he asked eager yet fearful that whatever fragile hope he had might be dashed.

"Just the stories and skills passed down to us by those that went before. The civilization of my ancestors had nearly destroyed itself with materialism and empire building." Cisca-Mar gazed out over the rippling water. "My Mother and Grandmother were amongst the six hundred. Two of the lucky few that fled Quillasal. They ran before the shock wave, the ships behind them turned to atoms, ten million lives as dust in the wind."

Ianto wasn't sure what he'd expected. Denial or anger he supposed. A history lesson hadn't been it.

"They ran with what little they could carry onto whatever ships they could find," Cisca-Mar continued. "The Perisson was a freighter, not meant for so many souls. They lived in its bare cargo holds, whole families, homeless, worldless, trying to survive a journey they knew not where or when it would end. They burnt through all the fuel cells crossing empty spaces until they were running on just momentum and steering thrusters to keep them going."

"There were three thousand on the ship when it left Quillasal but just six hundred crawled from the wreck of the Perisson." She looked at Ianto. "They found this place and it was as the first lands were described. It was, my grandmother told me, as if they had been handed the primordial world from which we had first come into being. We were being given a second chance. They called it Elen-Sicar, the first world reborn."

Ianto heart sank. The Star-Chosen were just as trapped on the planet as they were, it was just that they had been there long enough to start making a new life for themselves. "That's it then," he said feeling tears threatening. "There's no way to help Jack, no way home. Nothing."

"Don't ever give up hope. Hope is the greatest weapon we can ever possess." She put her hand on his arm. "The Perisson remains in the marshes, perhaps there is something on board that you could use. We took much of what we could carry at the time and in the years since, but some still remains."

"How do I find it?" Ianto asked, remembering how featureless the marshes had seemed to him.

"I will talk to Pon-Pel, she will take you there." Cisca-Mar stood and leaned on her cane. "It will rain later, I think, so you should go soon. Much of the ship is buried now and when the rains come it can flood."

Ianto gathered up her braiding for her. "Thank you. You've been very kind to us,"

"It is no more than you deserve. After what my people once were, we seek only to do good, to meet kindness with kindness, for you have sought to take nothing and you have met us with only gratitude." Cisca-Mar walked with him back to the house. "I will send Pon-Pel to you. Be ready to leave soon."

"So what have got to say for themselves then?" Owen asked as soon as Ianto go through the door.

"Cisca-Mar says that they arrived here years ago on a space ship, a generation or two ago. They salvaged what they could at the time and have been going back occasionally to retrieve anything that wasn't nailed down. Pon-Pel is going to take me there so we can see if there is anything left that might be of use."

Owen smiled for what seemed like the first time since they arrived on the planet. "Told you, didn't I? So off you go, see what's left of the medical supplies. Maybe we'll even be able to patch up this ship once Jack's back on his feet and get home."

"It might not be that simple," Ianto said, hating to kill the hope that had suddenly appeared in Owen's voice. "The ship is almost completely submerged in the marsh. It's going to be hard enough getting in and out again. I don't think getting it flying again is going to be possible, I'm sorry."

"You really know how to piss all over any little bit of good news we get, don't you?" Owen replied angrily.

"Pon-Pel is going to take me there now," Ianto said, turning back towards the door, knowing better than to try to argue with Owen when he was like this.

He'd reached the door when he felt a sudden tug on his arm and he looked round to find Owen.

"Just be careful, all right. Don't you go doing any of that stupid self-sacrificing crap."

The genuine concern in Owen's voice was unexpected, but Ianto replied, "I'll try not to, but Jack comes first."

"No," Owen's grip tightened. "You're equal. Jack wouldn't want you risking yourself for him and neither do I."

"You really mean that," Ianto said surprised. He knew that their relationship has gone from antagonistic to something approaching friendship over the last few months, but he hadn't realised just how deep Owen's feelings ran.

"Of course I do" Owen said defensively. "And before you get any funny ideas it's because I don't want to be on my own with the small hairy and purples for the rest of my life. Now get going."


	6. Chapter 6

**Part Five**

Lying on its side in the marshes, the wreck of the Perisson was not immediately obvious and Ianto knew that without Pon-Pel to lead the way he would never have found it.

It must have been an immense ship once, as large perhaps as the Millennium Centre back in Cardiff and far beyond the scale of anything he can imagine ever getting airborne. Although maybe it never needed to be, perhaps it had never been designed to break atmosphere, docking instead on space stations, which would help to explain its disastrous landing.

Now just a few sections of hull stood clear of the marsh. Twisted and torn, with rust having cut strange filigrees from the metal panels, the wind whistled eerily though them giving the place an almost otherworldly atmosphere.

"A few more winters and I doubt there'll be a way into it anymore." Pon-Pel said looking sadly at the remains of the Perisson. "There used to be so much more to see when I was a kid. We used to play in it. It's too dangerous now."

Ianto shivered, not relishing the prospect of entering the wreck. "But we're still going in there?"

"It's safe enough if you know what you're doing. It's just that it's easy to get lost in there and find yourself on the wrong side of a flooded section. Speaking of which, it's going to be pretty damp and we might even have to swim for a bit if we're going to get to the storage section, so you'd best lose most of those clothes. I can't think you could swim too well in them." She looked at Jack's wrist strap on Ianto's arm. "Will it be all right getting wet?"

It wasn't something Ianto had given any thought to, but he'd seen Jack end in up in the bay or the Taff a few times while chasing something that had come through the Rift and he'd not seemed too worried about what the water might do to it. "I think it should be all right."

"I hope so. I like being able to speak with you."

"I should learn to speak your language, not rely on this," Ianto said as he started to unbutton his jacket. "Jack is going to want it back and if anything did happen to it I'd rather not have become reliant on it."

"You should speak to Con-Mai, he organises the classes for the children. I don't think he'd mind an extra pupil or two." She watched him for a moment then said, "You do not think you will be going home soon?"

He laid the jacket down on a mound of stones near the ship, the too obvious and painful answer sticking in his throat. He sighed and fidgeted with the buttons on his waistcoat, which despite no longer having a shirt, he still wore. "I'm not sure we'll ever go home at all."

"I'm sorry," Pon-Pel said. "You did not mean to come here, did you?"

Ianto shook his head. "It was an accident. We were trying to make a piece of technology safe, but it went wrong. We're lucky to be alive really. When it went off I..."

Pon-Pel held up a hand. "It is not good to dwell on such things. Where there is life there is always hope. Perhaps someone will miss you and come to take you home?"

If anyone could find them it would be Tosh and Gwen, but it would be an almost insurmountable task. Even if they had the technology capable of travelling to wherever and whenever the planet was whether they could get it to work safely and reliably was another matter. "I don't know if they can."

"Uncertainty doesn't mean it is hopeless," Pon-Pel pointed out, putting a hand on his arm. "You must live in the now, but always carry hope for the future with you. It is the only way. It is how my parents and grandparents survived here."

After all he'd seen and been through, Ianto wasn't sure he could actually cling to that faint shred of hope. Life had left him with the outlook of when you think it's as bad as it can get it, somehow it will always manage to get worse. He didn't want to argue about it so he just nodded and said, "Maybe you're right."

Striped to the waist, his clothes and shoes piled up neatly for when they returned, Ianto shivered, the air cold and damp on his bare skin.

"Let me go first," Pon-Pel said climbing easily onto the curving hull and scrambling across its mossy sides to one of the holes.

"Do all your species have so little hair?" Pon-Pel asked as he joined her on the hull.

Ianto supposed it must seem like a little to a race that's entirely covered in it, but he felt a little self-conscious all the same as he replied, "I suppose so. A lot have less."

Pon-Pel looked surprised. "It must very cold for you. Or is your planet very hot so you don't need it?"

"Some parts are," Ianto said, trying not to think too much about the fact that he was unlikely ever to see it again. "It rained a lot where I was from."

"A bit like here then," Pon-Pel said walking along the hull until she reached what had been the door to a cargo bay.

Ianto looked up at the grey sky, the clouds low and heavy above them. It could almost have been autumn day out in the Brecon Beacons. With one last look at the open sky, he followed her in to the wet gloom of the ship.

Ianto had never considered himself to have a problem with enclosed spaces, but the cramped corridors designed for the Star-Chosen were rarely more than five foot high and, combined with the knee high water, made him wish for the open skies of the marshes again.

The light Pon-Pel carried lit the way for a small area around them, but did little to help, the blue-green bio-luminescence of the substance in the lantern throwing out far less light than he would have liked. Pon-Pel seemed confident though, and led them through the ship with barely a pause. Some sections were flooded, while others were merely incredibly damp, mosses and lichens covering the walls. Deeper into the ship, where there was no natural light, the walls were still bare, the metal cold and slick under his fingertips.

As they descended deeper into the wreck the water in the corridor they were following grew deeper, until it was chest deep on Pon-Pel. Unable to stand upright because of the low ceilings, Ianto followed her thought the increasingly flooded ship.

His back ached from where he was hunched over, despite the fact that the rest of him felt almost numb with the cold. Pieces of cable and wiring, as well as loose floor panels caught and snagged at his legs, threatening and occasionally succeeding in tripping him, but Ianto pressed on.

As he spluttered back to the surface for a fourth time, Pon-Pel took his arm. "Are you sure you want to go on?"

The rational part of him was yelling 'No. Let's get out of here while we still can.' Yet when he spoke, what came out was, "I can't. I've got to find something to help Jack, to make him well again. I can't go back without having tried."

"He's very sick, isn't he?" she asked as Ianto leant against the wall, trying to get his shivering back under control.

"Owen thinks he might die." It was too hard to admit that he feared the same, because admitting it felt too much like accepting it as inevitable, and he couldn't think about losing Jack. He stopped and closed his eyes, trying to compose himself, the idea of a life without Jack in it threatening to drag him down.

"Cisca-Mar is helping him. He will come through."

"You know Cisca-Mar quite well? You visit her a lot," Ianto asked, trying to find something to focus on that wasn't freezing water swirling about his waist or his fears about Jack's health.

"Yes. But it's not her I'm really going to see," she said sounding rather shy. "You'll have seen Rila-Bek. She's one of Cisca's assistants. The really pretty one who's a bit shy."

Ianto frowned, his mind feeling like it was wading through mud as he tried to think which one of the two Star-Chosen what worked with Cisca-Mar she meant.

"It doesn't offend you, does it? That my choice of partner, if she'll have me, is the same as myself." There was fear and sadness in her eyes when she looked up at him. "Our grandparents told us how when we lived amongst the stars there were cultures where such things meant pain or death. You do not believe such a thing, do you?"

"No," he reassured her, wondering if he should tell her that unfortunately there were still people who thought like that back on Earth. "It doesn't. It really doesn't."

She looked at him for a moment, head tilted to one side. "Your friend, Jack, he is more than a friend then?"

"It's complicated. Once we were..." Ianto stopped and sighed. "I really don't know what we were or are. But I care about him. He's a good man and he's been through a lot. Too much."

"And your other friend, Owen, he is more too?" Pon-Pel asked. "I see how he looks at you. How he made sure you had a blanket when you fell asleep on the floor."

If the situation with Jack was complicated then whatever there was between him and Owen was even more so. There had been times when Jack had been gone when things between them could have changed into something more, but it hadn't and Ianto wasn't sure why. "I don't know."

Right now Ianto would settle for Jack being well, even if they weren't ever together again.

"If we are going to find anything it will be in these rooms here," Pon-Pel said leading them into yet another set of partially flooded corridors. "These were the upper storerooms. Although I suppose they are the lower storerooms now."

Everything looked as it had been thoroughly ransacked, although he could tell it that was because the rooms had been stripped of anything of value or, if was damage, caused in the crash. Open crates bobbed in the water, scraps of fabric and plastic like packaging floating around them.

Room after room along the corridor continued the same. Cold and disheartened, Ianto was beginning to wonder if they would find anything and whether it was possible to get so cold you couldn't move, when Pon-Pel called to him.

Wedged between the sliding doors of what had probably once been a lift was a crate.

"Help me get it loose," Pon-Pel said, tugging on the crate to trying to get it free.

Taking hold of one set of handgrips in the side, Ianto pulled. For a moment nothing happened and Ianto was about to suggest looking around for something to pry it loose when it suddenly came free, sending them falling backwards into the water.

Ianto barely registered the cold this time and scrambled back to his feet so he could get a better look at the crate. Made of metal, the box was cube about a metre square, with handholds set into each side. On the top was a peeling plastic label.

The writing on it remained stubbornly unreadable and Ianto realised with a sinking feeling that the translation device was either not functioning properly or, perhaps more likely, just unable to translate text. "Do you know what it says?"

Pon-Pel pointed at a symbol on the crate that might have been a fan or a stylised webbed hand. "It's emergency supplies. They were meant for people in crashes or pioneers on uninhabited worlds." She ran her hand around the rim. "It is still sealed for travel. Someone must have been trying to take it with them, but something happened." She looked at the green, slimy watermark near the top of the corridor. "Flooding perhaps. We shouldn't stay here too long."

"Does it say what's in it?" Ianto asked, reaching for the catches on the lid.

"No, but it will probably be a mixture of tools, dehydrated ration packs and medical supplies." She put her hand over Ianto's. "If you open it will no longer be waterproof. Better to get it outside first. If there is anything in there that could help Jack we should wait to open it safely."

Ianto nodded. He could feel weariness dragging him down already, his body not fully recovered from the time spent in the marshes before they were found.

The crate was heavy and even with Pon-Pel's help it was a slow, arduous task to move it back up through the ship. There were little more than half way when she stopped and looked at the water swirling around them.

"Is something wrong?" Ianto asked, wondering if it was just his imagination that it seemed deeper than it had before.

"It has started to rain," Pon-Pel said, concerned. "We should hurry."

The water even in the upper sections of the ship was rising fast. Water, which had been ankle deep when they'd first entered the ship now rushed icy cold about Ianto's waist. Ahead of him Pon-Pel was already swimming, the lantern with its feeble light bobbing in the water next to her on its cord.

There was no way to swim and carry the crate, so when they came to sections where the entire corridor was filled with water Pon-Pel either found them a way around it or scouted ahead to find out if the flooded section was short enough that Ianto could hold his breath and walk through it.

Waiting alone in the dark and cold, water rising about him was worse, Ianto found, than the walking through the flooded sections. The fear that they might become separated and that he might never find his way back to light and warmth, chilled him as much as the frigid water.

Eventually though, the darkness of the ship started to give way to the greyer light of a wet afternoon sky as they neared the shattered hull.

"You are very brave," Pon-Pel said as she helped him lift the crate out of the ship and place it on the exposed hull.

Cold, wet and so tired he felt dizzy, Ianto shook his head and sat down next to the crate. It seemed secure, but he couldn't shake the fear that perhaps water had leaked in and ruined what was inside. "No, I'm not."

"You risked your life for another," she said, helping him get the crate down from ship and onto the waterlogged ground beside it. "What is that if not brave?"

"I don't know. Maybe you're right." He still didn't feel it, although at that moment he wasn't sure he was capable of feeling anything other than cold. He wasn't going to argue if Pon-Pel wanted to believe it, he'd let her. He'd become very good at letting people just assume things about him, to the point where sometimes he wasn't sure any more who the real Ianto was.

His clothes, which he'd taken off in an attempt to keep dry, were saturated with rain, but Ianto put them back on, as it was easier to wear them back than carry them when he had the crate to transport.

The walk back to the lake seemed endless, the world narrowed down to just putting one foot in front of the another, the mud squelching beneath them as the rain fell incessantly. Carrying the crate was soon abandoned in favour of pulling it behind him on a short length of cord Pon-Pel had brought with her.

Head down against the torrential rain, Ianto only noticed that they had left the marsh when he stumbled, feet slipping on the rain-slick pebbles on the lake shore.

"Nearly there," Pon-Pel said, putting a hand on his arm to steady him. "My boat is just over there."

The crate seemed to have gained weight and Ianto struggled to lift it onto Pon-Pel's raft. Ianto looked at how low it was sitting in the water. "Will it take us all?" he asked doubtfully.

"Of course it will." Pon-Pel climbed on near the front of the raft. "You just need to sit opposite it to keep the weight balanced."

Even with her reassurances that it was all right, Ianto still had the unnerving feeling that it was about to sink at any moment. Pon-Pel though continued to paddle it back across the choppy waters of the lake to the village.

Looking out into the wind and spray, Ianto could see a lone figure waiting on the jetty. Too tall to be one of the Star-Chosen, he felt his heart sink.

Owen should have been with Jack. If he wasn't, did it mean... He tried to shut down that line of thought and failed. The idea that Jack might be gone, that he might never get the chance to say goodbye, sat like a lump of lead in his chest.


	7. Chapter 7

**Part Six**

Ianto stumbled off the raft and stood swaying on the jetty, while Pon-Pel moored the boat.

"Are you all right?" Owen asked, as he gripped Ianto forearms, steadying him. "You look like hell."

"Jack?" Ianto asked, feeling sick and dizzy, worry and cold threatening to overwhelm him. "How's Jack?"

"He's just the same." Owen let go of Ianto's arms slowly, making sure he wasn't going fall over if he did. "Just stand there and don't fall in the lake while I help Pon-Pel get the crate."

The raft bobbing away from jetty, the crate, now that it was no longer balanced with Ianto's weight, caused the deck to tip, threatening to pull Owen into the water should it go overboard. After seeing them struggling with the crate two Star-Chosen that Ianto didn't recognise, who had been checking one their own boats came over to help and eventually managed to get it off the raft and onto the safety of the jetty.

Pon-Pel, seemingly as unflappable as ever, pointed to Owen, then to Ianto and gestured towards the building where Jack and Cisca-Mar where, before talking to the other Star-Chosen. After a moment they picked up the crate between them and set off.

"Come on then," Owen said, taking hold of Ianto's arm. "Let's get out of this rain. It's worse than Cardiff and I didn't think I'd ever say that."

"Why were you outside?" Ianto asked leaning against him.

"I'd just come outside for break, clear my head for a minute and someone pointed out you were coming back, so I thought I'd hang about and see if you needed a hand."

It was a totally reasonable explanation and Ianto felt stupid for expecting the worse. Keeping his head down against the rain, he allowed Owen to lead the way.

As soon as they were back inside Owen pulled Ianto towards the fire. "Now get your clothes off."

"What?" Ianto stared at him, uncertain if he'd heard him correctly.

"I said get your clothes off, they're soaked." Owen picked up a blanket and handed it to Ianto. "Then wrap this round yourself and sit by the fire until I tell you not to."

Ianto nodded, being warm and dry sounded like the best idea in the world. The thick wool of his coat was saturated and it took several attempts to get the buttons undone. Beneath, the waistcoat was just as wet and his finger numb and clumsy from the cold struggled with the smaller buttons.

"Let me do it or we'll be here all afternoon," Owen said pushing his hands out of the way. "Your hands are freezing. Seriously, why didn't you come back sooner? The weather is crap out there."

"It took a long time getting out the ship. It was flooding, some of the corridors were completely underwater. I got through them as fast as I could." He shuddered at the memory. "I hope the water didn't get in and ruin things."

Owen gave him an irritated look and then crouched down to help him get his shoes and socks off. "I told you, no bloody stupid heroics, didn't I?"

"I just did what needed to be done," Ianto said quietly, not wanting to think about it anymore if he could help it.

Owen looked round at where Pon-Pel and the other Star-Chosen who'd helped them at the jetty had brought the crate in and were opening it under Cisca-Mar's supervision. "Was it worth it?"

"I don't know what's in it," Ianto admitted, starting to shiver worse now that he was actually warming up. "But there has to be something. Pon-Pel said it was like a survival kit. I should take a look, find out what we've got."

"Oh no, you don't, you just sit there and don't move until you stop shaking," Owen grumbled, sounding more worried than annoyed. "I can look in box without your help you know."

Sat by the fire, Ianto watched Pon-Pel talked to Cisca-Mar and another Star-Chosen that he supposed was Rila-Bek, if the way Pon-Pel was looking at her was anything to go by. He hoped they would find some measure of happiness together, the universe needed more love and happiness and not less in his experience.

Owen looked through the crate, taking things out and piling them on the floor in two separate heaps. Once the last of it was emptied, he kicked the crate bad temperedly. "Well if we needed to build a shelter in the snow, send up a distress flare or repair an inflatable boat it would be great."

"So that's it? There's nothing we can do?" Ianto said bleakly, wondering how having failed could hurt so much when everything else felt numb. "Maybe I missed something," he said, thinking out loud. "I could go back, try again, there has to be something there. We can't give up on him."

"No." Owen crossed the distance between Jack's bed and the fire almost before Ianto could register than he'd moved. Putting his hands onto Ianto's shoulders Owen pushed him back onto the seat. "Don't be so bloody stupid. You're freezing, if you go back out there and you're risking hypothermia."

"But Jack..."

"Jack needs you to stay well. You'll be no use to anyone if you get sick too," Owen said sounding more worried than angry. "Look I can probably use some of the stuff you brought back. The scalpels type things in there are a lot better than any of the knives they've got here and there are some bandages and dressings that once I've given them a wash might still be of use."

"Knives?" Ianto asked, feeling slow and stupid. "Why would we want those?"

Owen sighed, his grip on Ianto's shoulders changing from something designed to keep him in place to something more comforting. "Because I'm going to try and cut the infected bits out, pack it with a saline dressing and hope like hell it works."

Ianto hung his head. He trusted Owen to do the right thing, as while he'd sometimes made mistakes, it had only ever been due to over confidence or preoccupation with something else. But cutting pieces out of Jack's leg seemed more desperation rather than a plan. "Are you sure?"

"As I can be, leaving the infected tissue isn't helping him and he's not going to be able to heal with it there. So it's got to go. And don't look at me like that, like you think I'm talking crap," he grumbled. "I know what I'm doing. And before you ask it's called a wet to dry dressing, the idea is to keep the wound clean and every time you change it to take away any manky bits that might be forming. It's not ideal and I'd like to have a shed load of antibiotics and painkillers to back it up with, but I haven't, so I'm going to do the best I can with what I've got."

"Is there anything in there you could give him? Pon-Pel seemed to think that there should be medical supplies in there." Ianto looked over at where Pon-Pel was sitting with Rila-Bek, talking and occasionally leaning in to whisper something in her ear. "Maybe I could get her to tell me what they say, the translator doesn't see work when things are written down."

"The stuff has been there for years, even if it was suitable for humans, which isn't very likely, it's going to be so far past its expiration date that I wouldn't chance it. I go dosing Jack up with who knows what and it could kill him faster than that hole in his leg."

"Will it still work if you can't give him anything?" Ianto asked, scared and hopeful at the same time.

"I don't know, but if it doesn't the only thing I've got left to try is cutting the damn thing off," Owen said angrily, then looked towards Jack, a guilty expression on his face, worried that he might have heard and understood. He sighed, then added quietly, "I wasn't joking the other night, you know. If the infection spreads much more it's going to be too dicey to keep cutting round the edges. Better to take the thing off while he's hopefully still strong enough to survive it."

"Oh." Ianto hunched over, wishing that Owen hadn't mentioned it again.

Owen shook his shoulder. "Oi, don't you go falling apart on me. I need you here."

"What do you need me to do?" Ianto said voice weak and shaky, barely rising above a whisper. He knew, though, as long as he was needed he'd somehow be able to keep going. It's what he always did.

"Nothing right now. You get warm. I'll sort out what we need and get the scalpels cleaned and get some salt water on to boil so I can soak some bandages in it." He gave Ianto's shoulder a squeeze. "Later on you get to fetch and carry for me, and when I start cutting you're going to have to help hold Jack's leg still. I don't want to go cutting out any more than I need to."

It took Owen some time to be happy with the preparations and Ianto watched as he checked and re-checked everything, until finally he went over to Jack and applied a hand full of the numbing paste to the area around the wound.

"I'm going to try leaving it on for about half an hour," Owen said by way of an explanation when he saw Ianto was watching him. "Then I'll wash it off and get started. Are you going to be all right to help?"

Ianto nodded. He still felt cold, the chill seeming to have settled deep in his bones, but Ianto knew he could function. He'd worked feeling a lot worse in the past, pushing himself on until he'd barely been able to stand. He took a few deep breaths then got up and retrieved his clothes that had been left to dry by the fire. He was ready, he told himself, he had to be.

"Jack," Owen said crouching down next to him. "I'm going to have sort out your leg. It's going to hurt, but I'll be as quick as I can and hopefully you'll start feeling a bit better soon. Do you understand?"

"That's good," Jack said, words slurring together as he stared at a point somewhere over in the corner of the room. "Like flowers in the sky, so pretty. I miss them all."

Owen stood up and rubbed a hand across his eyes. "At least he's not likely to remember this."

Ianto found it was small comfort though as Cisca-Mar and Owen washed the herbal paste from Jack's leg, revealing how much the wound had degraded. The puncture wound ran parallel to the surface of Jack's leg for part of its length. The skin above it was white, bloodless in places, and stretched and shiny in others, while around the ragged entrance to the wound it was red and swollen.

"There's not much feeling left in the dead bit," Owen said, picking up the knife. "It's when I start getting close to the bits that aren't that he's going to feel it. So get ready to hang on tight."

Ianto couldn't imagine how agonising it must be for Jack with nothing more than the insufficient painkilling effect of the herbal paste.

Jack sobbed and whimpered, breathless broken pleas spilling from dry and cracked lips as he begged for them to stop, that he would do anything they wanted if they'd just stop hurting him. It broke Ianto's heart to hear him and if the look in Owen's eyes was anything to go by it was tearing him apart as well.

A cry of pain tore free from him as Owen cut deeper and Ianto closed his eyes as he held Jack's leg tighter. It was too many of his nightmares. It was knives and blood and pain. It was everything that reminded him of the Cybermen's conversion units or the charnel house of a kitchen in the farmhouse in Brynblaidd. He could feel cold sweat beading on his forehead, sickness rolling in his stomach and burning the back of his throat.

Ianto was only vaguely aware of Owen finishing cutting, only when he spoke, asking Cisca-Mar to pass him the bandages did he open his eyes.

The wound on Jack's leg was far larger, a raw weeping mess of open flesh and Ianto staggered back, hand covering his mouth, uncertain whether passing out or throwing up was more likely. "I've got to..."

"Just go," Owen said waving him away. "I've nearly..."

Whatever else Owen said Ianto didn't hear as fled the house. Hurrying past surprised looking Star-Chosen, he only just managed to get to the nearest jetty before dropped to his knees and retched into the water.

There was nothing much to bring up and Ianto felt weak and wretched as he sat, knees drawn up to his chin on the edge of the jetty. Numb to anything but his own perceived failure, the everything going on around him faded to a dull buzz.

The sun was setting, low and brilliant on the horizon when Cisca-Mar pressed a beaker of hot, spiced drink into his hand and put a blanket around his shoulders. He nodded and mumbled his thanks, grateful but unable to muster energy or will to do anything more.

Holding the drink until it grew cold in his hands, Ianto sat hunched in the blanket as the evening turned into night. Clear and dry now, the twin moons rose high in the cloudless sky and the small firefly like creatures that appeared on the lake once darkness fell skimmed across its surface.

Ianto blinked, uncertain of what had jolted him out of the numb state he'd managed to fall into.

"Hey, you listening to me?" Owen said prodding his arm again. "Are you asleep?"

"No. I'm sorry," Ianto said without looking round. "I shouldn't have run out."

"Yeah, well I probably shouldn't have asked you to do it really," said Owen sitting down beside him. "Don't 'spose you want to share a bit of that blanket if you not coming back inside yet?"

Ianto held out the blanket so that Owen could sit shoulder to shoulder with him on the edge of the jetty.

"I guess that's a no to coming back inside then."

Going back into the house, spending another night listening to Jack rave and cry, was more than he could face. "I can't do it, Owen. I can't see him like that. I can't watch him die bit by bit." He wrapped his arms about himself, only vaguely away of the fact he was shivering again.

"You can't stay out here all night."

"Do you remember I said I'd see him suffer and die once? " Ianto said quietly, ignoring what Owen said. Those words spoken months ago had come back to him again and again since Jack had got hurt, the irrational guilt that he was somehow to blame slowly filling more and more of his thoughts. "It was after he'd set Myfanwy on Lisa."

"Yeah, but we all say stuff we don't mean."

"But I did mean it." Ianto closed his eyes, feeling tears burning behind the lids. "When I said it I really meant it. I hated him then, but afterwards I couldn't because he was only trying to keep us all safe, and he forgave me when I still can't forgive myself. And I'm so sorry for all of it, but it's never going to get any better. It only ever gets worse."

"Oh for fucks sake, don't start crying," Owen said, sounding like he was barely hanging on himself. "Ianto, please. I can't look after him on my own. I need you here being your 'stupidly calm in the face of a world of crap' self, because somehow that makes it all right."

"Well I can't," Ianto snapped, eyes opening and tears running down his face. "I can't do it anymore. I've had enough of being the one everybody leans on, of being the one who has to keep on going regardless of the all shit that life throws at me. Because I can't, because it's killing me and I..."

"Shush." Owen put one finger to Ianto's lips, the other hand grabbing the front of Ianto's open coat. Then, pulling Ianto close he kissed him.

The initial shock was short lived and Ianto responded kissing him back. Eager and desperate. The need for someone, anyone to care about him and drive away the abject fear and loneliness that was consuming him driving out any other concerns he might have had.

"Any better?" Owen asked, releasing Ianto's coat.

Ianto shook his head, feeling colder now that Owen had pulled back from him. "Not, really no."

"Good."

"What?" Ianto looked at him baffled and a little hurt. "Why did you kiss me then?"

"It's good because you're not lying and pretending to be fine when you're not." Owen took Ianto's hand in his. "And I kissed you because you needed to know somebody cares about you and I thought it was pretty good way of showing it."

"And that's it?" Ianto asked surprised that Owen would even consider his feelings, despite what Pon-Pel had said about how he looked at him.

"Well that and I wanted to, so there didn't seem any point wasting the opportunity."

Ianto sighed. He'd seen Owen bounce from short term partner to partner with the occasional affair in between. He hardly fitted into the category of a one night stand though, there was no way they could avoid each other after this. "Why are you doing this really?"

"Because you aren't the only one who can't deal with this alone. I need somebody too and unlike you, I don't do suffering in silence. I do something about it." He grabbed the front of Ianto's clothes again and pulled him close. "We need this. Something to hold on to. I know you still have a thing for Jack and if, when, he gets better you'll probably going to want to be with him rather than me, and that's okay. This doesn't have to be more than tonight."

"Just tonight," Ianto repeated, vaguely offended that Owen would think he'd just drop him as soon as Jack was well and confused by the fact that he found himself open to the idea of it being something longer term.

"Yeah." Owen looked at him something desperate and vulnerable in his eyes. "Ianto, please."

Ianto licked dry nervous lips, knowing he'd feel guilty later. He wasn't with Jack and never had been, if he was honest, with him in any form of committed relationship. What they'd shared before he'd left had been little more than what Owen was offering now, a little bit of kindness and affection in an otherwise desperately lonely life. He'd loved him then and still did and the idea that he could be finding comfort with Owen while Jack was suffering was almost more than he could bear.

As much as they needed this, he told himself, they couldn't leave Jack alone. What if he needed something or if he got worse. "We shouldn't, Jack needs us."

"Cisca-Mar is watching him. She pretty much ordered me out of there to go and find you. She can explain an awful lot just by glaring at you and pointing. " Owen's hand which had been gripping Ianto's coat moved, slipping inside it, holding onto him. "It doesn't have to be the whole night you know, just a little while."

"All right," Ianto said softly, not quite believing that he'd actually agreed.

"Come on then, it freezing out here. Pon-pel showed me somewhere we can go," Owen said, helping Ianto to his feet.


	8. Chapter 8

**Part Seven**

Ianto woke slowly, with the growing awareness that he ached all over, muscles protesting at the cold, cramped and heavy work of the previous day.

The blanket stuck to him as he rolled over, trying to find a more comfortable position, memories of the previous night rushing back. Owen leading him to a small house, just to the side of the one where Jack and Cisca-Mar were, and pulling him towards the bed. Clothes being shed and intimate kisses and touches given. Them moving together in the soft lamp light until the breathless heat had driven out the cold and they'd fallen asleep together. It hadn't been the best sex he'd ever had, they had both been exhausted, but it had been real and all the better for it.

The space in the bed where Owen had slept was empty, the sheets already grown cold and reluctantly Ianto decided that it was probably time he got up as well.

After managing to find most of his clothes, there was only one of his socks and one of Owen's, Ianto got dressed.

He blinked as he walked out into bright sunlight. The sun was already high in the sky, the village busy with people working outside, enjoying the sunshine after the wet and cold weather of the past few days.

"You're awake then," Owen said as Ianto let himself into the house. "I was beginning to think you were going to sleep all day."

"Why didn't you wake me?" Ianto asked, concerned that perhaps Jack had got worse in the night and there hadn't been time for anyone to come and wake him.

"Because you were knackered, you've barely slept since we got here." Owen got up and walked over to him. "So I wasn't going to wake you up if there was a chance you'd actually get a good night's sleep."

"Thank you," Ianto replied, surprised that Owen had thought to be that considerate, it wasn't something he was used to. "How's Jack?"

"No worse." Owen looked over at were Jack was muttering quietly in his sleep. "But not any better either."

Ianto's heart sank. "So it didn't work?"

"It's too early to say, but it's the first night he'd not got any worse, so that's got to count for something." Owen pushed him towards the table. "You need to eat something and then we'll work out what we're going to do."

"About us or about Jack?" Ianto said sitting down, unsure if he was ready for either conversation.

"About living here," Owen said, filling up the bowl he'd placed in front of Ianto with porridge from the pot over the fire. "We haven't got any way of getting home and there doesn't seem to be anywhere else to go on this planet, so we're stuck here. So we've got to think about..." He gestured vaguely. "Stuff."

"Stuff?"

"Yeah. Like where are we going to live and what we can do for them?" Owen sounded embarrassed as he added, "We can't live on their charity forever."

Ianto was all too aware of why that sat so badly with him, while he didn't know all the details, Owen been rather sketchy about some of it when they'd ended up talking about their childhoods while travelling back from the Himalayas. He knew enough though to understand it hadn't been good, growing up on the poverty line on a sink estate in South London with a distant and disinterested mother. Living on hand outs and the charity of neighbours had shaped Owen's outlook on life far more than he was willing to admit. Without thinking about Ianto put his hand over Owen's as a gesture of support. "We'll find something. You're already helping Cisca-Mar and I could volunteer to go out foraging with Pon-Pel. Or there's fishing or helping with the boats."

Owen looked at their hands, appearing more uncomfortable than reassured at the gesture, but didn't move his hand. "If I'd known you'd be this positive after getting laid I'd have done it days ago."

"You do know it's more likely to be the fact I slept for more than three hours, don't you?"

"You go on thinking that," Owen said dismissively.

"Oh, and this was amongst the stuff in the crate," Owen said putting a small case on the table. "I think it was probably meant for shaving off bits of fur so they could see what they were doing if they had stitch up an injury, but I reckon you could use it to have a shave if you wanted. Cisca-Mar didn't seem to want it."

Ianto looked at the device doubtfully. "Is there a reason you didn't try it first?"

"Haven't had time. Any way, you need it more than I do," Owen said with a grin. "It was just like kissing a yeti like night."

Ianto rubbed his hand across several days' worth of stubble, getting rid of it would be nice. "All right, but I don't look like a yeti."

"Nah, your back isn't hairy enough."

"I do not have a hairy back," Ianto said indignantly.

Owen laughed. "You're too easy to wind up, it just not fun anymore. Just eat your breakfast and go and get sorted out."

A shave, a full night's sleep and a warm meal inside him, Ianto had to admit, did make him feel more like himself again and more able to cope with the day ahead. Leaving Owen with the instruction to send somebody to find him if anything changed with Jack, he went to find Pon-Pel.

He found her working by her raft. She turned and smiled at him as he approached. "You and Owen," she said wiggling her thumbs a knowing look in her eyes.

It wasn't the start to the conversation that Ianto had hoped and he felt his face flush.

Pon-Pel stared at him. "I did not know your species changed colour. Is it something that happens after..."

"No," Ianto said quickly. "We don't do it on purpose. Heat, cold, embarrassment."

"You are embarrassed? Why?" She climbed off her boat and onto the jetty. "Owen is a healer. He should be a good mate." She looked across to where Rila-Bek was helping unload some bundles of plants from a boat a few jetties over. "Healers have good hands."

It was more information than Ianto had wanted to know and he looked down at the wooden planking beneath his feet, the water just visible through the gaps, until he hoped he looked less red in the face.

"Have you come for advice?" Pon-Pel asked as she gathered up an untidy bundle of nets and began to untangle them.

"Not about Owen," he said hoping that she didn't pursue that line of conversation. "Actually I've been thinking, you've been very kind to us, but we can't live on charity, so we'd like to help with things around the village."

"I will see what needs doing," Pon-Pel said handing him the edge of a net so that he could help her fold it neatly. "But until you can speak to all of us, what you can do will be limited. There are few who speak the trade language and they grow less with passing years." She smiled sadly. "But perhaps your arrival will change that, the children will see there is a point to it after all."

"Why did you choose to learn it?"

Pon-Pel shrugged. "A sense of adventure I suppose, and my great grandmother spoke it. She'd been something to do with trade in the time before we came here." She put the net down, then paused before starting on the next one. "I think she always hoped that we'd find our way back to the stars or that more of us would find our way here."

Cisca-Mar's Mother and Grandmother, and now Pon-Pel's great Grandmother, had all the passengers on the ship that had crashed been women? Ianto wondered. Pon-Pel had seemed so far to be very open to answer questions, so he asked her.

"Mostly they were," she replied, sitting down on the stack of nets. "We didn't always live as we live now. Once we were a warlike people. The boys went very young to train as soldiers, or so my Grandmother told me. The women did everything else that was not killing."

Ianto looked at the small, peaceful village. Smoke curled from the vents in the thatched roofs, people talked and worked, children ran and laughed and played, while the water lapped softly about the thick wooden timbers supporting the platform the village was built on. It didn't seem possible.

"Our destruction and why we fled were self-made." She sighed. "I don't know how much Cisca-Mar told you, but what we fled was civil war. Colony against colony, brothers fighting brothers, over nothing that mattered. Whole planets were laid to waste, Quillasal was just one of dozens. It is not a history to be proud of."

"I'm sorry." It felt inadequate, but Ianto said it anyway.

Pon-Pel stood. "We live well now though. It is a simpler life, with no rules but the four ancestors made for us."

Hoping that he hadn't accidentally broken any of them, Ianto said, "What rules are those?"

"I can show you. They are on the great banner in the community hall."

Walking through the village, Ianto followed her to the largest of the buildings.

"They made it during their first winter here." Pon-Pel pointed up at a large oval of cloth fastened to the wall. "Winter here is harsh. The marsh freezes and so does the lake. The days are bitter and short as the snow sweeps down from the mountains. It must have been terrible for them."

Ianto shivered, knowing that if they had been unlucky enough to arrive during such a winter they most likely wouldn't have survived long enough to be found and taken back to the village.

Words that he couldn't read had been carefully stitched in four parallel arcs, the rest of the fabric decorated with abstract designs that he supposed had some meaning to the Star-Chosen but could just have easily been used just because they thought it looked nice. "What does it say?"

Pon-Pel pointed to the top arc of writing. "The land and sea and sky belong to no one.' Below that it says, 'Take no more than you need and give back when you can.' And below that, 'Harm none by word or deed.' The last line says, 'All are different, all are equal, all are free under the sky.'"

"And these are all the rules you have?" Ianto asked, wondering if it was really true.

"They are all we need. We live or die by cooperation or the lack it." She shook her head. "It is too nice a day to be inside and to spend talking of such things. And I've got to finish getting the nets ready."

"I should get back to Owen and Jack," Ianto said, and with one last look at the banner, he followed her back outside.

She walked with him most of the way back to the house, pausing only once they got to where the narrow paths between the houses split off to the jetties. "I'm glad you asked about working," she said.

"Why?"

"Because it means you are at home here even if you still miss your own world. Just remember you can only learn from the past, you can't live in it or recreate it in the present. Time moves on like the flow of water." She put a hand on his arm. "Do not try to hold its passage back, because like the flood water when a dam breaks it will so much worse."

Ianto nodded, knowing only too well what she meant.

"Good. I will come by later and let you know if there is a job to do."

Standing at the edge of the village, looking out at the distant tree lined shore, Ianto took a deep breath. Digging his hands into his pockets he turned and walked back to the house. This was their life now and for Owen and Jack's sakes he would live it the best he could.

X0X0X0X0X

There was no sudden break in Jack's fever, rather a slow decrease over the course of another day and night, until it was low enough for him to be aware of what was going on around him.

His voice was weak and scratchy as he tried to catch hold of Ianto's hand as he brought him a drink. "Hey, you stayed."

Surprised and relieved, Ianto nearly dropped the beaker of water. Putting it down on the floor, Ianto crouched down next to the bed. "You're awake."

Jack groaned as he tried to sit up and failed. "Not seeing an upside to that."

"Don't say that." He felt more emotional than he thought he would, the relief that Jack was awake making him feel shaky. "Just try to drink a little."

With Ianto supporting his shoulders, Jack drank slowly until he'd finished half the water. Turning his head away to let Ianto know was done, Jack asked, "How long?"

"Five days," Ianto replied. Those days had seemed like some of the longest of his life, the hours spent worrying stretching out into eternity. The worry about whether Jack would survive hadn't decreased as it became clear Owen's treatment was working, it had just changed to be about how well he'd recover and how long it would take. How sick and weak Jack looked scared him, fever and nearly a week with minimal food stripping the weight from him faster than he would have thought possible.

"Oh, only remember the first morning or night," Jack said sounding confused, words starting to slur with tiredness. "It's hazy. Don't like losing time."

"I can tell you all about it, if you'd like, but it's not very interesting."

"No." Jack shook his head, eyes closing. "Later. So tired."

"Then sleep." Sitting on the floor, his head resting close to Jack's, he stayed with him until he fell asleep.

Lucid but in a substantial amount of pain if he tried to move, Jack was unable to do more that lay in bed for first few days following waking up.

Owen continued to change the dressing twice a day, an activity which Ianto had come to dread. As while he hated to see Jack in pain, he felt he couldn't let him go through it alone.

The wound still looked raw, like something had taken a large bite out of Jack's leg, but it was clean, new healthy skin forming round the edges.

It was exhausting looking after Jack, being responsible for every little thing, especially when it felt like he was being the worse patient imaginable. Uncooperative in just about everything from eating breakfast to trying the exercises that Owen had said would help, he'd snap at them for the slightly thing, saying vicious, hurtful things, that Ianto knew was just the pain and exhaustion talking, but which hurt and played on his mind none the less.

His relationship with Owen, Ianto had soon decided, was the only thing keeping him from going under. As despite their intentions that it wouldn't be anything more than an occasional arrangement, a little comfort when things seemed to be getting too much, it had rapidly changed into something else.

They had just fallen into it, so when Jack finally fell asleep, often in the early hours of the morning once exhaustion had won out over the pain he was still in, they would climb into bed together. Frequently they were too tired to do anything more than sleep, but to Ianto that didn't matter, their relationship was about support in whatever form they were able to give, not just sex. Although he had to admit when they did, Owen certainly knew what he was doing.

Life was far from perfect and sometimes he missed Gwen and Tosh and Cardiff so much it was an almost physical ache, but knowing that he had Owen and Jack made it bearable and with each passing day it became a little more so.


	9. Chapter 9

**Part Eight**

The days dragged one into another as the weather slowly improved, the air growing warmer and the marshes greener. Ianto found he spent more time out on the lake with Star-Chosen, his grasp of the language just about good enough for him not to be too much of a liability while they fished. While Owen split his time between working with Cisca-Mar, trying to learn what the various herbs she used did and helping Jack, making sure he kept exercising his leg.

Jack seemed to retreat from them as they days grew longer and hotter, spending his time sitting outside staring out across the lake. His leg was continuing to heal, although the twisted mass of scar tissue on his leg still gave him pain sometimes and he was still reliant to some extent on the walking stick that Owen had made for him.

It had to be hard for him, Ianto told himself as he went to find him and tell him it was almost time for lunch. Not so long ago he'd been immortal, he'd lived for more than a hundred years in perfect health and had eternity to do whatever he wanted. Now he was facing the fact that he'd nearly died, that middle age wasn't all that far away and that there was the possibility, although Owen played down the fact, that his leg might never recover enough for him not to need a stick. With all of that on top of the fact that they were stuck on a planet, away from their friends with little to no hope of rescue or ever seeing them again, it amazed Ianto that Jack found the strength to get up each day

He found Jack in his usual spot, the end of the longest of the jetties, looking out at the sunlight shimmering on the water, a lost expression on his face.

"How did it go with Rila-Bek today? Pon-Pel said she was going to find you something to do for the Double Moon festival. Something to do with making drinks."

Jack picked morosely at the edge of the wooden planking of the jetty. "How do you think?"

Another bad day then, Ianto thought with a sigh as he sat down next to him, not knowing what to say to even begin to make it better.

Sitting in awkward silence they watched the boats leaving and returning across the lake, while Star-Chosen children swam in the clear water, splashing each other and laughing.

"Owen thinks you should try swimming," Ianto said, the atmosphere between them finally getting too much for him. "The water is a lot warmer now and it would be good exercise. I could join you if you'd like, I should practice more as Pon-Pel is talking about letting me come on one of the trips out to the coast."

"What's the point? It's not getting any better. Just look at me," Jack said miserably, waving a hand to indicate his still too thin face. "I used to be a poster boy you know. The Face of Boe they called me. Boeshane that is, not the famous giant head in a jar. Even he'd be more use to you now than I am."

"Don't," Ianto said taking Jack's hand in his, hating to hear him sounding so low.

Jack stared at him and leant in as if expecting a kiss.

"I'm sorry, I can't. Not right now," Ianto said, turning his face away, hating to do it to him. Part of him desperately wanted to kiss him, to put his arms around him and hold him tight and see if the old Jack, the one who despite all the difficulties in his life was full of love and joy, would reappear even if it was only for a few moments. Yet he couldn't, it felt too much like cheating on Owen, even though they hadn't made any claims on each other for exclusivity.

"You mean not now I'm like this," Jack said bitterly, pulling away from him. "I never thought you were so damn shallow."

"Jack, please I..."

"No." He got up awkwardly with the aid of his stick. "Just leave me alone."

Standing on the jetty, Ianto watched Jack slowly limp away and wondered how it had all gone so wrong. He wanted to chase away the emptiness in Jack's eyes, to let him know that he wasn't alone, that he was loved and cared for and that was never going to conditional on what he was able to do. But Ianto knew that whatever his intentions, with Jack and their history together there was a very good chance that it would become something sexual.

And there in lay another problem. Neither he nor Owen had told Jack about their arrangement or as it was rapidly becoming, relationship. They hadn't set out to deceive him, but he'd been so weak and so worn down by pain that it had seemed unkind to tell him at first. Then he'd been so irritable with them that neither of them wanted to face what he'd say, as while they weren't doing anything wrong Jack had the ability to make then both feel like they were the worse friends in the world.

And now, Ianto thought, getting up to go and join Pon-Pel on his job for the day, getting more than two words at a time out of Jack was difficult, and that hardly leant itself to the type of conversation they needed.

X0X0X0X0X

"I've been thinking about Jack," Ianto said as he climbed under the covers next to Owen that night. If he was honest there had been nothing but Jack on his mind since their almost kiss that afternoon.

The more he'd thought about him the more he'd missed what they'd had before Jack had left. The closeness, the fragile but growing sense of trust between them, the way Jack would laugh and joke and late nights together naked in each other's arms, when he'd chase away his fears and doubts. He even missed the difficult times when Jack had been filled with doubt or consumed with memories of the past, because then, unlike now, he'd felt able to help.

The truth, as hard as it was to admit even to himself, was simple. He'd been in love with Jack then and he still was now. Yet he felt the same about Owen, some things were different, but when it came down to it, he didn't want to think about a life without Owen in it in the way he was now. It was a mess, and as painful as it was to think about, he knew he had to do something about it before it tore him and them apart.

Owen rolled over so that he was facing him. "Haven't we all. He was a right bastard this afternoon about exercising, worse than usual. He needs else something to do, something to occupy his mind so he's not just sitting there worrying about how long his leg is going to take to heal. It'll get there in the end, just not as fast as he wants it to."

"I know," Ianto replied, uncertain of how to start the conversation that he and Owen really needed to have. "Pon-Pel has offered to take him on a fishing trip to the far side of the lake and Rila-Bek and few others have got him helping with the preparations for something called the Double Moon festival."

Owen let Ianto talk for a couple more minutes, a growing look of irritation on his face, and then said, "That's not why you were thinking about Jack, was it?"

Lying on his back looking up as the ceiling Ianto sighed, wondering how he'd become so transparent. He was sure he'd been better at hiding his feeling than this. Although he supposed, at least it meant they were going to talk about it. "No. I was thinking about him, about us."

"I guess I should have known that once he was back on his feet that would be it," Owen said bitterly. "It was never going to be me was it? Gwen picked Rhys and Diane took her chances with the Rift rather than be with me."

"Owen..."

"No, it's fine." Owen kicked off the covers and moved to get out of bed. "I 'spose I should be grateful that it lasted past him waking up. Well, it was fun while it lasted."

"Stop it." Ianto grabbed hold of his arm to stop him leaving. "I care about you both and I don't want to lose this. I don't want to lose you."

"So what are you saying?"

If I knew that, Ianto thought, then this whole conversation wouldn't be so damn hard. What could he say? That I love both of you? That I want to be with both of you? That having to choose between you is going to break by heart?

"Look, I'm not a bloody mind reader," Owen said frustrated, freeing himself from Ianto's grip. "What is it you want? Because if you're suggesting you spend half the week with Jack and the other half with me it's not going to work. Jack will know."

"Of course not, I'm not talking about an affair, with us sneaking about behind each other's backs. It would be the three of us, together."

"Really?" Owen said, anger draining away a little. "I never figured you were so kinky. Although I 'spose there had to be a reason why Jack was interested."

"I don't just mean sex," Ianto said wondering if Owen ever thought beyond the physical. "I mean the three of us together in a proper relationship."

Owen stared at him in growing disbelief. "You really mean that, don't you?"

"Yes." He took a deep breath, nerves starting to get the better of him. "It's a lot to ask, I know, but I don't think I can choose between you. I don't want to have to."

"You really can't choose between us?"

"Didn't you tell me that Jack and I were equal as far as you were concerned?"

"Yeah, but..."

"You didn't think I'd think you and Jack are?" And that, Ianto thought, was perhaps one of Owen's biggest flaws, that he frequently showed little or no consideration for others because he never expected any for himself.

Owen shrugged. "Well you did shoot me last time you had choose."

"I didn't choose Jack though, did I?" Ianto said thinking how close to the edge he'd been, how even now he wasn't sure if he'd meant just to injure. "That was about protecting Cardiff, about keeping a lot of people safe. After what happened with Lisa, I couldn't put myself, my feelings first, and live knowing people died."

"So why'd you help us open the Rift then?"

"Time was fragmenting and it would have only got worse. Jack admitted that he didn't have any answers, any way to fix it." Ianto took a shaky breath. "I knew about the protocol that had been set out years ago about opening the Rift and it seemed like a better option that doing nothing." His stomach felt like it was in knots and he turned away from Owen as he said, "I didn't think we were going to survive it, but least the world would have been safe."

"Fuck," Owen said quietly, something close to fear in his voice. "Seriously, you thought that and did it anyway?"

Ianto nodded, feeling shaken. "Tosh knew about it too. We told Jack that if that's what it took we'd do it."

"I thought you were trying to get Lisa back and I wasn't sure about Tosh. Any way, let's not talk about this anymore tonight. You can ask Jack tomorrow about whether he'd be up for a threesome if you like, and we'll take it from there. I can't promise anything, well apart from sex," Owen said, "But if you really want this then I 'spose I should at least give it a go."

"If you don't want this, tell me," Ianto said hating that he was being made to feel like he was pushing Owen into something he wasn't comfortable with. "Owen, please. If this is going make you miserable, if you know you can't do, don't get my hopes up."

"You do know Jack might say no," Owen said, then shook his head. "Okay it'd be turning down a chance at getting laid, but stranger things have happened."

"That's not an answer. Seriously, I'm not going to ask him anything unless I know you're all right with this."

"Just stop over thinking everything I say," Owen said wearily. "I can't promise you a proper relationship, not like you mean it, not even if you were suggesting it was just the two of us. I don't do that kind of commitment. I can't. So that's it. I can give you what we have now plus Jack in our bed too, but not more."

It wasn't what he wanted, but Ianto knew that for now it was as close as he was likely to get, provided of course Jack said yes, and maybe given time Owen would realise that what they already had far more than just sex. "Thank you."

"It's not like sex with Jack is going to be much of a hardship," Owen said as ran his hand down Ianto's hip. "But tonight it's still just the two of us and I don't want to waste a minute of it."

Ianto smiled at him and moved closer, hooking a leg over his. "And I wouldn't want to make you."


	10. Chapter 10

**Part Nine**

It was following evening, the hot day fading into a comfortably warmth, before Ianto managed to find Jack alone. Sitting once again on the furthest jetty, his feet dangling over the side into the water, he cut a lonely figure.

Nervous, he felt like he should have made an effort to look smarter. It didn't seem right asking Jack if he wanted to be in a relationship with him when he was so scruffy. Wearing just his waistcoat and with his trousers rolled up to his knees after spending half the day working out on the lake, Ianto ran his hand through his hair trying to get it a little neater.

Taking a deep breath, Ianto walked up to him. "Hello, Jack. I've been looking for you."

"Why?" Jack asked wearily without turning round. "What do you want?"

"I've been thinking..." Ianto began, hoping that Jack would prove to be in a better mood than he had the previous day.

"And you think I haven't? I've done nothing but think," Jack snapped at him. "It's not like I can do anything else anymore."

"Well you could actually try talking to us for a change," Ianto replied, rather more crossly than he'd intended. He'd played out the start to this conversation so many different ways in his head all day and none of them had been like this.

"About what? You don't want to know the things I've been thinking about, believe me." Angry and tense, he stood up ready to walk away from Ianto. "When I was away, what I saw, what happened, how it all ended. Just be glad you don't have those memories."

It was the closest thing they'd had to an admission that something bad had happened while he was away. It made Ianto wonder just how much of Jack's current distantness and bad moods were a product of more than his slowly healing leg and how much was him finally having time to start working through things that had quite possibly been building up for years. Whatever it was, it was dragging Jack down. Missing meals and skipping exercises meant to strengthen his leg weren't going to help him. "I'm worried about you," Ianto said putting his hand on Jack's arm.

"Yeah, so worried you started sleeping with Owen," Jack said bitterly, pushing his hand away.

"I thought you were dying," Ianto said, immediately regretting how awful that sounded.

"And that makes it so much better, does it?"

"No." Any resolve that Ianto had about having the conversation rationally crumbled. He felt sick at the thought that he had been adding to Jack's unhappiness. Of course Jack was upset, he had every right to be. His and Owen's timing had been terrible and he'd done nothing but think about what he wanted and needed since. "I'm sorry. I just needed..." His voice cracked and scrubbed a hand across his eyes. He'd been so low that night, that if Owen hadn't been there he's not sure what would have happened to him.

"Hey, I'm sorry." Jack caught hold of his hand. "I know. I've been there. I shouldn't have tried to make you feel bad for that. It was low, real low."

Ianto sniffed only feeling marginally better. "We should have told you, not gone behind your back."

"You weren't. We weren't together. Hell I'd probably have done the same," Jack said putting an arm around him. "It might hurt that you couldn't trust me enough to tell me. But I don't get to make you feel guilty when you did nothing wrong."

"I'm still sorry." Ianto sighed. "I could have dealt with this so much better than I have."

"So could I," Jack said quietly. "I just feel so angry all the time and so damn guilty. "

"You've got nothing be guilty about," Ianto said, letting Jack lean against his shoulder. "All the things you've said to us, we understand. Yes, some of it hurt, but you were hurting more."

"Not that, not only that." Jack shivered despite the warm evening. "It's because all this is my fault. I should have made you two stand back while I secured the crate. I could have got you killed. I dream about it you know. Waking up in the marsh, with you and Owen dead beside me, and I'm back to not being able to die, however much I try and no one finds us..." He trailed off, breath catching and he turned his face against Ianto's shoulder.

"Jack?"

There was just a wet sniff in response and Ianto realised that Jack was crying. It seemed terrible and so very wrong to see Jack like this, the weeks of pain both mental and physical having taken their toll until he couldn't bear it in silence any longer.

Stroking his hair, he let Jack cry, knowing that sometimes there was nothing else left to do. In the days following Lisa's death there had been days that he'd seemed to do nothing else, the delayed grief from everything that had happened at Torchwood Tower threatening to drive him under. Jack had been the one who'd held him together. The least he could do was return the favour.

"I'm sorry," Jack mumbled against Ianto's shoulder.

"Don't be. None of this is your fault." Putting an arm around Jack, Ianto moved him so he could see his face again. His eyes were red and still full of tears, but it was the loneliness and defeat in them that worried Ianto the most. Remembering how Jack had assumed he would kiss him the previous day, had seemed to want him, Ianto leant in and kissed him.

Jack hesitated for a moment, then responded, hands gripping the front of Ianto's waistcoat like he was scared to let go and kissing him back, hungry and desperate for affection.

"What will you tell Owen?" Jack asked, as they slowly pulled back from each other.

"That I kissed you. He knows how I feel about you." Ianto licked his lips, suddenly dry and nervous again. "Actually that's what I came to talk to you about."

Jack tried to smile and failed. "I hope you'll be happy together. You deserve it. I know Owen can be difficult, but if he loves you there nothing he won't do for you."

"That not what I meant," Ianto said quickly, touched that Jack would put his before his own. "We want you to join us. For it to be the three of us. Together."

"I don't know," Jack replied, looking and sounding stunned. "I did that once before, and I don't mean those twin acrobats I told you about. I loved them both more than I ever thought I was capable of loving anyone, I even died for them. I don't know if I can do it again."

"We aren't them, whoever they were," Ianto said carefully, not wanting Jack to think he was disregarding something that had obviously meant a great deal to him. "You know me and you know Owen, I just want you to think about it and not judge us on what you had with someone else."

"You amaze me sometimes, Ianto Jones," Jack said, taking hold of Ianto's hand. "You're still so young, but I'd swear you're one of the wisest people I know." He smiled, tears still in his eyes. "I can try, but I can't promise you more than that."

Ianto smiled feeling almost giddy with relief. "That's as much as anyone can give. Thank you." He pressed a brief kiss to Jack's lips. "Thank you, Jack. Thank you."

"How did you know about me and Owen?" Ianto asked as they leant shoulder to shoulder, watching the sun dip lower on the horizon, and the twin moons rise in the darkening sky.

Jack laughed, although there was still something fragile behind it. "You two, really not subtle."

"We did try."

"I know." Jack smiled at him, warm and genuine this time. "You gave it away though."

"Me?" Ianto frowned wondering when he'd been indiscreet.

"It was nothing you did," Jack reassured him. "It's how you looked. You were happy. It made me wish I could have been the one to make you look like that."

"You already have," Ianto said, resting his head against Jack's shoulder.

"I told you he wouldn't say no."

They turned to see Owen standing behind them, a smug expression on his face at being proved right.

"How long have you been there?" Ianto asked, realising that they must have been so engrossed in each other that they hadn't heard him.

"Only just got here. But I'm right though, aren't I?"

"How could I say no?" Jack grinned at him, a good imitation of how free his smile has once been. "Two gorgeous guys asking if I want to get in bed with them, of course I said yes."

"Come on then." Owen held out a hand to help Jack to his feet. "Let's go get something to eat and work out what we can do about getting a bigger bed."

Then together they walked back to the house, the bright moonlight from the two nearly full moons shining down on the village.

X0X0X0X0X

"So this is home," Jack said looking around the dimly lit interior of the house.

It wasn't the word Ianto would have chosen to use. Home still meant a place far away, his flat on the edge of Cardiff with his things in it, his CDs, his books and the old family photos that sat on the Welsh dresser he'd inherited from Gran. This was just a house. A bed, a few woven storage baskets and a raised clay hearth to cook over and keep them warm. Despite Owen and himself having lived there since their first night together, they'd done very little to it. Between caring for Jack and working around the village there had been no time to do the repairs the place needed or replace the rather tattered reed mats that covered the floors and walls.

"Pon-Pel said it belonged a couple who moved out to the coast," Ianto said when he realised that Jack was actually waiting for some kind of answer to what he'd said. "Apparently they have some salt pans there. They went to take over the family business."

"Luckily for us," Owen said, bringing in the straw stuffed mattress that Jack had had, and putting it down next to the one he and Ianto shared. "Cisca-Mar said you could have this until you've had time to make your own. I think she was glad to have the place back to herself."

"So how do you want to do this?" Jack said sitting down on the edge of the mattress. "Because I was thinking we could all get naked and see what happens."

Owen snorted, trying and failing not to laugh.

"Hey I've been waiting more than a year for this."

"You been planning on getting me and Owen into bed together since..." Ianto did a few rough calculations in his head. "At least as long ago as that business with the weevil fight club?"

"Yeah," Jack said with absolutely no conviction at all. "Yeah that's exactly what I meant."

Worried about why Jack would feel the need to lie to them about it, Ianto sat down next to him. "It wasn't, was it?"

Jack rubbed his wrist absently, and the shook his head. "I was away for longer than it seemed to you. It was a year. A real long year. A lot of things happened, and it really wasn't fun." He shook his head again, a haunted look in his eyes. "And no, I'm not talking about it. Not now, not tonight."

"If you don't want to tell us about it, don't," Owen said sitting down on the other side of him. "But if there's anything we should know about, I mean anything you don't want us doing tonight, you'll say, won't you?"

Jack stared at him, confused at first and then horrified. "No. No, it was nothing like that. Believe me he was a monster, but never like that. I was a prisoner. Terrible food and boredom was the worst of it for me. The world went to hell and back, but it all got fixed in the end. Even me." He smiled, lost and melancholy for a moment then he leant forward and kissed Owen, slow and deep, his hand stroking the back of Owen's neck.

"Hold that thought," Jack whisper against Owen's lips as he pulled back. Then, turning to Ianto, he kissed him as well.

With a soft sigh, Ianto closed his eyes, letting the sensations wash over him, ready to allow Jack to take control of what would happen, happy to give him back some much needed control over his life.


	11. Chapter 11

**Part Ten**

Things settled into a routine without too much difficulty. Each morning Ianto would go to work with Pon-Pel, Owen would go to learn about herbs with Cisca-Mar and Jack, in an attempt to make their house a little more comfortable, joined the group of older Star-Chosen spent much of each afternoon making the woven grass matting.****

As the Double Moon festival got closer the whole village seemed to get involved in the preparations. Cooking fires burnt despite the warmth of the day, and the number of people in the village seemed to increase daily, new boats being moored up every few hours.****

Given that the population of the village was around two hundred and Cisca-Mar had told him that six hundred had safely come off the Perssion two to three generations before, Ianto knew that he shouldn't be surprised that there were other settlements, but it seemed strange to realise that their village was not the only one.****

There were, he found out from talking to the new arrivals, two villages on the coast and one closer to the mountains where the land was more heavily forested. It made a lot of sense for everybody not to have ended up living all in one location. Actually getting enough resources to survive must have left them with very little choice apart from splitting up.****

So in addition to the preparation for the festival there was a great deal of activity around the boats. Grains and plants from the marshes were traded for wood and iron from forest village, and salt, dried fish and seaweeds from the coast. There was a little good natured haggling, but for the most part what was going to be exchanged already seemed to have been decided. Cargoes were loaded and unloaded with the minimum of fuss, the crews talking as they worked together, swapping stories and gossip about what was happening in their villages.****

Unsurprisingly, their own arrival in the marsh village had become a topic for discussion, and there were many curious glances in their direction. Although once they'd realised that they hadn't actually done anything all that interesting or surprising, their attention turned back to more pressing matters. ****

**"**How often are there double full moons?" Ianto asked as he helped Pon-Pel set out tables on the floating platform that had been built between two of the jetties, as there wasn't a large enough space between the tightly packed houses to hold the festival.****

**"**Twice a year. This one and the one at the end of winter." She put down the bundle of rush lights that she had been carrying onto the table and started to fix them into their holders. "This one marks the end of summer. The days are getting shorter already, you must have notices how the heat doesn't last so long after the sun has set."****

The weather had been good for so long it seemed almost impossible that it was shortly going to come to an end.****

**"**Don't look so worried," she said, with a laugh. "The lake isn't going to freeze overnight. We've got a good few weeks until there even a chance of a frost. They'll pass quickly though, there's always so much to do to make sure all the harvests and fuel are safely stored away." ****

**"**I'll be travelling down to the coast once the festival is over," Pon-Pel continued as they started on the second row of tables. "There will be room in the boat if you, Jack and Owen want to come too. It will probably be your only chance until next spring."****

**"**Are you leaving?" Ianto asked, remembering what Pon-Pel had said about the couple who'd had the house moving away.****

**"**No. I'd never get Rila to move away from here, and I'd not go without her." Putting down her hand full of rush lights, Pon-Pel sat on the edge of the table. "It's just a trading trip really and a chance to gather plants and herbs that only grow by the sea. Cisca-Mar has decided that she's too old to make the trip this year, so Rila's going. It would probably be an idea for Owen to go as well, so he can see where the herbs grow and know how to find them."****

Ianto looked at Owen who was helping move some small barrels from the hall out to the square and then at Jack who was sitting with the group who where preparing the lanterns that were to be hung around the edge of the village. "I'll ask them later," Ianto said, hoping that they would agree. A trip out of the village and a chance to explore more of the world that was fast becoming their home sounded appealing.

X0X0X0X0X

****The Double Moon festival started as soon as the moons rose, the night sky clear and bright with stars. The lanterns hung around the village and the firefly like insects skimming over the lake seeming to mirror them on the ground.****

The village was the busiest that Ianto thought he'd ever seen it, with everybody trying to congregate in the small, table filled space in front of the village hall. ****

It was a rather more disorganised event than Ianto had been expecting after all the preparations that had gone into it, with everybody just doing their own thing. He'd supposed that it would, given the time of year have something of a harvest festival about it and that there would be some kind of thanks given for the year. Instead, food and drink was brought out and put on the tables so everyone could help themselves, while the children, allowed to stay up late, ran wild through the crowds of adults, shouting and playing.****

The good mood of everyone there seemed to be infectious and as the music started to play and the dancing began, Ianto found himself joining in, Jack asking him and Owen to dance.****

As the moons reached their highest, brightest point, Pon-Pel climbed onto a table and whistled loudly. Once she'd got everybody's attention she leant down, and taking Rila-Bek's hand, helped her up onto the table beside her.****

Pon-Pel took off her second necklace and then bowing to Rila-Bek, held it out to her.****

**"**What's going on?" Owen asked, finding the combination of dim light and distance particularly hard without glasses. The fact that he had struggled to learn the language not helping either.****

**"**I think they got engaged or possibly married," Ianto said as Pon-Pel and Rila-Bek climbed down from the table, while the crowd whistled and offered them drinks. The conversation got faster and more excited until Ianto couldn't follow what was being said.****

**"**Who did?" Owen asked, as he tried to focus. ****

**"**Pon-Pel and Rila-Bek." Ianto smiled as he watched them, happy that his friends were able to declare their love for each other openly and be accepted for it. ****

**"**They make a lovely couple," Jack said, getting up to go and congratulate them.****

**"**He seems happier, doesn't he?" Ianto asked Owen as he watched him go. ****

Owen nodded, finishing his drink, then said, "He's getting there."****

**"**We all are," Ianto replied, realising that both his own and Owen's moods seemed to have lifted in the time the three of them had been together. Whether it was just the first rush of excitement of a new relationship he couldn't say, but he hoped that it wasn't, and that this was just the start of something that would last a lifetime.****

It wasn't how Ianto had ever pictured his life, living and sleeping with two men in a roundhouse on a lake on another planet. Because realistically, no one would ever picture that when they thought about their future. But for now it worked and they were happy.

X0X0X0X0X

****The sun was shining brightly, although there was a distinctly autumnal chill in the morning air as they loaded the last of what they needed aboard the ship.****

It was the largest that Ianto had seen in the village. With a wide flat deck, under which was substantial storage space and two broad sails it looked substantial enough to take onto the ocean. A number of other small boats including Pon-Pel's raft were moored alongside it, their small crews also loading on supplies for the trip.****

Sitting beside Owen and Jack on the deck, Ianto watched as the village grew smaller in the distance as they set off across the lake to the river that drained from it, and which would lead them down to the coast. ****

The river wound its way slowly though the marshes, the land slowly changing from the moorland type environment where they'd first arrived to salt marshes that teamed with insect and bird life. Ianto knew that technically the creatures they saw there were neither, but it they seemed to fulfil the same niches in the environment.****

It was the longest Ianto had ever been on a boat, and by the first evening, he was already starting to regret it. The journey was smooth enough, the slow moving river and wide, shallow draft of the boat meant there was very little in the way of a rolling motion. The complete lack of privacy was worse part, he decided as he bedded down for the night under the awning that had been put up over the deck when they stopped for the evening. The prospect of five day journey down to the coast seemed to stretch out endlessly in front of him.****

The fact that, depending on the sleeping arrangements when they got to the village, it might be the best part of two weeks before he got to spend another uninterrupted night with Jack and Owen did little to help his mood. ****

Not that it seemed to bother Owen, who was playing some form of dice game or Jack who was talking to the Mol-Jost, the ship's captain, and pointing up at star constellations. While Pon-Pel and Rila-Bek had taken their boat to the river bank to camp overnight and get a little privacy. ****

The river widened as they approached the coast, the banks retreating back out of sight beyond dozens of narrow, twisting channels. Dropping the sails, oars were brought out as they slowly made their way through sandbars. ****

Mol-Jost spent much of his time standing at the front of the boat, gesturing left and right as he guided them through. ****

Eventually the main channel of the river opened out, and ahead of them they could see the sea. Wide and blue, under a sunlit sky, the waves broke with white crested surf on the shingle beach.

****X0X0X0X0X

****The village was some way down the coast from the mouth of the river. Built from slabs of yellow-grey stone quarried from the nearby cliffs, the easily split shale had been stacked neatly to form a dozen dry stone walled houses. Large, round structures they each had an open central courtyard with a fire pit surrounded by rooms radiating out like spokes on a wheel.****

Sheltered from the wind by the dunes, the houses all had a small plot of land that was well tended and turned over to growing vegetables. Paths made of the same shale slabs led from the houses to the beach where five boats were berthed in stone-lined depressions just above the high tide line.****

On the cliff tops were strange wooden frames that reminded Ianto of the clothes horses his Gran had used to dry bits and pieces of washing in front of the fire when the weather was too bad to put it out on the line.****

**"**They're for drying fish and seaweed," Jack said standing beside him and looking up at the cliff top frame. "I've not see one like that since I was a kid."****

**"**You weren't born on Earth, were you?" Ianto asked after a pause. The question had been a long time coming, but it was only recently that he'd had any hope of having it answered.****

**"**It was an Earth colony. Right on the edge of… " He stopped and smiled. Wistful rather than happy. "It wouldn't mean anything to you or anyone else yet."****

**"**That doesn't mean I don't want to know," Ianto told him, hoping that Jack might tell him a little more about his past. "If I told you I used to stay at the caravan park near Llwyngwril you wouldn't have any idea either."****

**"**I don't think I could even pronounce that," Jack said amused. "So did you?"****

**"**Yes." Ianto smiled, remembering the caravan park overlooking the Irish sea. Halfway between Aberdovey and Barmouth it had hardly been the most exotic of holiday locations, but as a child the rocky beaches and sea caves had seemed to provide endless opportunities for adventure. "Mum, Dad, Nan and Granddad. Packed in like sardines into a caravan, determined to enjoyed our week by the sea whatever the weather."****

**"**I've never heard you mention any of them," Jack said, moving slightly so that they were sitting shoulder to shoulder.****

**"**They've all passed on. Some years ago now," Ianto said quietly. "At least they aren't missing me and worrying where I am."****

**"**I'm sorry," Jack said, putting an arm around him. "I forget how much you've lost sometimes."****

Ianto looked down at Owen who was talking with exaggerated hand gestures to Rila-Bek and a couple of other Star-Chosen from the beach village. He knew a little of Owen's unhappy childhood, and how out of all them he'd probably had it the hardest during those early years. It wasn't his story to share, but the little he knew explained so much about Owen. "We all have."****

Together on the dune top, they sat looking out at the sea until Owen came to tell them it was time help get the evening meal ready down in the village.


	12. Chapter 12

"You're up early," Jack said rolling onto his side as Ianto got out of bed the next morning. On the other side of the bed Owen grumbled something about being cold and then disappeared beneath the covers.

It was far too early for Ianto's liking really, especially as it had been their first night to themselves since leaving the lake village, and he would have liked to have stayed in bed with them, but he'd already agree to help Pon-Pel.

"I'm helping on one of the fishing boats today. There's a type of really oily fish like creature that they need to catch and a big shoal has been spotted off shore," Ianto replied, as he got dressed in the weak pre-dawn light that was filtering in to the building they'd been told they could stay in.

"I'm getting turned down for fish?" Jack said with an exaggeratedly hurt expression.

"I'll be back later." Laughing, Ianto leant down and kissed him. "It might be quite late, but it should be before it gets dark."

Ianto made his way down to where the fishing boats were beached just above the tideline, their shallowly curved hulls resting in stone-lined depression in the sand. The oars were lined up next to them, while the Star-Chosen who crewed them loaded them with nets for the days fishing.

"I was beginning to think you weren't coming," Pon-Pel said, climbing down from one of the boat. She pointed to one of the larger fishing boats. "We're in that one. It's my uncle's boat, he's been fishing here for years, just follow what he says and you'll do all right."

The sea looked calm and the air was cold and still as they pulled the boats down to the water. It was deceptive though, and Ianto quickly found it to be very different from the smooth journey down the river, the small fishing boats bobbing wildly in the shallows close to the coast. "It will better once we're into deeper water," Pon-Pel said, patting Ianto on the back as the boat lurched forwards.

Grateful that he'd not had time for breakfast, Ianto nodded and tried to concentrate on rowing, rather than the decidedly uncomfortable way his stomach rolled with each pitch and heave of the boat.

It did get better once they reached the open sea, the feeling of nausea receding to just a slight lingering queasiness. It was hard work rowing out to where the shoal had been seen and it was almost noon by the time they actually found it.

The 'fish' were some of the least appealing that Ianto had ever seen. Narrow and about a foot long, they had bulbous eyes, a jutting out jaw full of small sharp teeth and a leathery skin that seemed to be coated with some form of slime. How anyone had looked at it and decided that it would be good to eat was beyond him.

Catching them had been a precarious business as far as Ianto was concerned. Standing on the edge of a rocking boat to throw a net out into the water and then pulling it back in weighed down with fish seemed far from safe.

Nobody fell in though, and eventually with Mos-Pel happy they packed their catch into the narrow storage spaces in the base of the boats. The sky had clouded over and the wind had gradually risen as the day had gone on, and by the time they were ready to return to the village with their catch, the rain had started to fall.

Mos-Pel, looked through the misty drizzle at the slate grey clouds low on the horizon behind them and shook his head.

"Is there a problem?" Ianto asked Pon-Pel, when he saw she looked worried too.

"Maybe," she replied. "There's a storm brewing and he thinks were too far out to reach the village before it hits."

"What do you think?"

"That it's going to be a rough few hours." She nodded towards an oar. "So we should go."

The water got choppier, waves breaking over the boats and drenching them as they fought to keep their course back to shore and safety. The feeling of nausea that had abated came back with a vengeance, and Ianto huddled miserably at the back of the boat, while Mos-Pel took his place on the oars.

Their boat was the largest and most heavily loaded of fishing boat and they soon fell behind the other four, losing sight of them behind the rolling waves and the increasingly torrential rain.

Ianto closed his eyes as another wave broke over the boat, soaking him.

There was a shout and he looked up to see Mos-Pel let go of his oar and lean over the side of the boat, trying to reach Pon-Pel who'd been swept overboard.

With her arm tangled in one of the fishing nets that had washed over with her, she fought to stay above the water, the current dragging her away from the boat.

As sick as he felt, Ianto knew he had to help. Staggering over to the side of the boat, he took a deep breath then dived into the rolling sea.

The water was ice cold and he felt as if all the air was driven from his lungs by it, but he forced himself to swim, knowing that if he didn't he'd drown.

As he reached her, another wave crashed over them and they were both driven under. A moment later they broke the surface together, coughing and choking, but free of the net.

Treading water, Ianto looked wildly around, trying to see the boat over the swell. For a moment he could see nothing, then as the wave dipped again he could see that Mos-Pel had somehow managed to turn the boat and was bringing it closer to them.

Swimming to meet it was exhausting, but eventually they were close enough that when an oar was held out to the them they could both reach it. Clinging to it, they were dragged in until they were close enough to be pulled back on board.

Ianto lay on the deck coughing out water and retching weakly as sat Pon-Pel wearily by his side, a hand resting on his shoulder.

They were still hours from shore and safety and as another wall of icy water crashed over them, he was hit with the sick certainty that they'd never make it. A few more waves the size of the one that had nearly drowned Pon-Pel and they'd all go under.

Feeling too weak and dizzy to keep his eyes open any longer, Ianto closed them. Freezing cold and wet, he curled up as tightly as he could. He wanted to be back with Jack and Owen in their bed, warm and safe and loved. Unable to stay awake, his last conscious thought was, at least Jack and Owen would still have each other after he was gone.

Ianto blinked awake to bright sunlight and somebody trying to rub some warmth back into his hands. Colder than he'd ever thought it was possible to be, Ianto tried to sit up, but was pushed back down by Pon-Pel.

"Rest a bit longer," she said, "we don't need to get back on the boat yet."

Looking round, Ianto could see that they were on a small sandy beach, sheltered on all sides by towering cliffs, the access to the sea just a thin stretch of water between the massive rocks. The boat was partially beached at the side of them, Mos-Pel and the rest of the inspecting it for damage.

"It's morning, the storm is over," she reassured him. "And thank you for what you did. I told you you were very brave."

He still didn't particularly believe it, all there had been at the time was fear, but he nodded anyway.

Ianto still felt cold and weak as he climbed unsteadily back into the boat, but the relief of knowing that he'd see Jack and Owen again in just a couple of hours helped to push him on.

The sea was calm, almost glass smooth as Mos-Pel guided them back out the narrow inlet and into the open water.

He hoped that the other boats had made it safely back, although he worried what their crews might have told Jack and Owen. He hated the idea that they might have spent the night fearing the worst.

Their boat was sighted long before they reached the village and there was a crowd on the beach waiting for them, ready to help them get ashore if they needed it. He could see Jack and Owen standing with Rila-Bek on the shore.

Ianto stumbled as he got out of the boat and by the time he got his footing again, Owen was next to him, pulling him into a near bruising hug. "Don't you ever fucking scare us like that again."

"Still need to breath," Ianto said, hoping that he didn't sound too shaken. There was no point worrying them now that he was back. "It wasn't that bad," he lied unconvincingly, feeling sick and shaky now that he was safely back on land and able to think about just how close they'd come not making it back at all.

"We thought you were dead. They said your boat sank," Owen said raw pain in his eyes. "Jack was in pieces, and I..."

"Owen..."

"No, you listen, 'cause I got to say this. I know, I said it was just sex and that was all I could give you." Owen stopped and scrubbed a hand across his eyes. "Only you had to go and make me love you. And I don't let myself do that, because it always ends badly and..."

"That's enough," Jack said finally reaching them. Then, dropping his stick and trusting them not to let him fall, he put his arms round them both and held them tight.

Owen supported them both until it became too much and then he allowed them to sink slowly to the ground. Kneeling in the wet sand, the sea lapping around them they stayed locked together until some of the Star-Chosen helped them back to the village.

X0X0X0X0X

They hadn't been back at the village on the lake long before winter began to bite. Light frosts at first that were gone soon after the sun rose, but all too soon the frosts seem to linger well into late morning, while flurries of snow fell in the night. The days grew shorter as well, night taking up more than half the hours in a day.

Clothing became a problem, as the Star-Chosen didn't wear any apart from on the bitterest of days when those that did venture outside for any length of time wore a hooded cloak. They'd made what they could, but staying indoors wrapped in blankets was the only reliable way not to feel frozen all the time.

Sitting round the fire, talking to Jack and Owen, and to Pon-Pel and Rila-Bek when they came to visit soon became one of the only ways to fill up the days, the weather having become too cold and snowy to work outside.

"It won't last forever," Pon-Pel said as they sat round, late on a bitterly cold afternoon. "A few more weeks and it will start to warm again. A few more months and it will be spring again."

Sitting by the fire, a blanket over his leg and his greatcoat round his shoulders, Jack shivered.

"Does anyone want a hot drink?" Ianto asked, knowing that Jack wouldn't appreciate or answer any direct questions about how he was coping with the cold making his leg ache.

Before any of them could answer a young Star-Chosen ran in and started talking excitedly to Pon-Pel and Rila-Bek.

Ianto could only catch a few fragments. Visitors, something that was very bright, not dressed for the cold. Then, before he could listen in any further, the door opened.

The beaker he was holding fell from his hand as he stared in surprise. Standing in the doorway, snow swirling in around them, were Gwen and Tosh.

Older than the last time he'd seen them, a few streak of grey showing in Tosh's hairs, while there were a few fine lines on Gwen's face that hadn't been there the last time he'd seen her.

"You're all here," Gwen said rushing forward to hug Jack. "I knew Jack would be and I'd hoped..."  
She stopped as Jack stood, leaning on his stick, and limped forward.

Shocked and worried, she stared for a moment before asking, "What happened? Why hasn't it healed?"

"Long story," Jack said smiling at her and putting an arm around her shoulder. "Anyway look at you, how long has been?"

"Nearly ten years," Gwen replied, sounding like she could barely believe it herself.

"You really looked for us for that long?" Owen said sounding surprised. "So how'd you find us?"

"The actual mechanics are rather complicated, but basically I rebuilt the Rift manipulator so it would work as it was originally designed to. Create and sustain a temporary portal using Rift energy," Tosh said, taking out a small tablet computer from her coat pocket. She turned to Jack. "I know you said we shouldn't do anything with the Rift, but after reviewing the calculations from the Ritz ballroom I realised what they problem had been. The final section of the equation had been lost."

"That's great. How long is open for?" Owen asked, already looking around for what they'd need to take with them. "We can go home now, can't we?"

"It will stay open for about another fifteen minutes. So you'd better collect anything you want to take with you quickly." Tosh looked at Pon-Pel and Rila-Bek who were watching them. "And say your goodbyes. I'm sorry there isn't longer, but we are about the maximum range so far supportable. Although I think with a few adjustments I'll be able to improve on it."

"I understand," Ianto said, feeling shaken by how fast everything was moving. Rescue had seemed so improbable that he'd barely given it any thought. It would be a wrench to leave behind the life they'd built for themselves here. To know that they'd most likely never see Pon-Pel, Rila-Bek or any of their friends here again. Yet they couldn't stay. The bitter cold hurt Jack's leg and Ianto worried that it would only get worse as he got older. And since they'd had to stay indoors Owen had been getting more and more headaches, the dim light from the lanterns and lack of glasses straining his eyes.

"You are going home," Pon-Pel said as he walked over to her and Rila-Bek. She smiled at him. "I told you to never give up hope."

Crouching down he put his arms around them both. "I'm going to miss you."

"So will we," Pon-Pel replied, hugging him back. "Will you ever come back here?"

"I don't know," Ianto said, realising as he said it that the answer would almost certainly be no.

Pon-Pel smiled and then sniffed. "Then there is still hope. Just like I told you before. Now you should go. I will tell Cisca-Mar what has happened."

There wasn't much they needed to take with them, just the few items that remained from when they'd first arrived. Everything else they left, knowing it could be used by whichever Star-Chosen moved into the house after they had left or shared out amongst the village if that was more useful.

It was freezing outside as they left the warmth of the house and Ianto heard Jack gasp as he nearly slipped on the icy ground, only Owen's grip on his arm stopping him from falling.

Between two of the houses there was a golden light shimmering amongst the swirling snow. It was too cold to stand around, even for one last look at the place that had been their home for so many months, and with Gwen and Tosh behind them, they stepped into the light.

And out into the Hub.

A young man who seemed vaguely familiar, but Ianto couldn't put a name to, stood by one of the computers, ready to shut down the connection once they'd all got back through. While a woman he didn't know at all was working at what had once been Owen's workstation.

The Hub looked little different. The old sofa behind Tosh's workstation had been replaced with something that looked more comfortable, and all the monitors had been upgraded to touch screen versions. But the rest, the half-finished dragon mural, the pool at the base of the water tower and the Torchwood tiles that looked more like they should have been part of an underground station than a top secret base remained.

"I've kept your office mostly the same," Gwen said to Jack after they'd had a few minutes to look around. "There's a new computer, and we finally got the hole in the brickwork fixed, but I knew you'd want it back."

"I'm not ready to be back in charge yet," Jack said, looking over at what had been office. "So if it's all right with you, you just keep doing what you were doing."

There was going to be so much to talk about and to sort out. Where they were going to live, how they would fit back into Torchwood, what had changed while they were away. He was sure Gwen and Tosh would have questions about what had happened to them and Jack would need to tell them about his new found mortality. For the moment though it all seemed too much to answer and Ianto turned away from them, trying to collect his thoughts.

"Does it still work?" Ianto asked, looking up at small section of sky visible high above his head where the invisible lift would exit onto the Plass.

"Of course," Tosh said, sounding like she understood why he was asking. "Do you want to go up?"

Ianto nodded. It was probably stupid on some level he decided, to feel like he needed to see the city again, but somehow seeing what was outside would make being back feel more real.

"That sounds like my kind of idea," Jack said joining Ianto on the lift.

Owen shrugged and then followed them. "Might as well."

The Plass was bathed in bright spring sunshine and filled with people, a craft market and a small funfair having set up outside the Millennium Centre.

It was so bright and loud and there were so many people that Ianto was glad nobody could see that he was staring at them in amazement. He looked at Jack and Owen's expressions mirroring his own and smiled. "We're home."

The End.

* * *

**Notes:**

****Thank you to everybody who has commented, favourited, followed or even just read. It's always nice to know that somebody like the the story._  
_

I know the last couple of parts feel rather more rushed than the rest, this is because I was writing for a big bang with a posting date that I needed to meet. So it was this or miss the deadline for posting.

Owen needing glasses comes from what we saw in the episode Adam, where geeky!Owen wears them, presumably meaning that ordinary Owen wears contact lenses.

The Ianto and Tosh knowing about a protocol to open the Rift to release a build up of energy comes from an extra scene on the DVD of series one for the End of Days episode, where Ianto talks to Jack about opening the Rift. It's a shame it didn't make the final cut of the episode at it made a lot more sense as to why Ianto and Tosh would go along with Owen and Gwen and open the Rift.


End file.
